Word.ws English Dictionary

came up short

came up short is the simple past of come up short.

Meaning of come up short

Verb

come up short (third-person singular simple present comes up short, present participle coming up short, simple past came up short, past participle come up short)

  1. Synonym of fall short.
    • They kept coming up short every time they closed out the register.
    Synonyms:
    fall short

Questions about came up short

What is came up short the simple past of?
Came up short is the simple past of come up short.

Words near came up short in the dictionary

  1. came up
  2. came up against
  3. came up and bit
  4. came up from behind
  5. came up roses
  6. came up short
  7. came up snake eyes
  8. came up to
  9. came up trumps
  10. came up with
  11. came up with snake eyes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: came up short (page history and authors); come up short (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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