Word.ws English Dictionary

come-on

More pronunciations (2)Fewer pronunciations

Northern US/ˈkʌmˌɑn/Southern US/ˈkʌmˌɔn/

come-on noun: something intended to attract, as in an advertisement.

Noun

come-on (plural come-ons)

  1. (informal) Something intended to attract, as in an advertisement.
    • The free offers are just come-ons to get you in the store so the sales staff can work on you.
    • He's got a come-on from New Jersey that I'm to steer to the turning joint.1897, Edward W. Townsend, Near A Whole City Full, page 164
  2. (informal) A statement or sometimes an action reflecting sexual or romantic interest.
    • I thought he'd asked me to lunch to discuss business; I wasn't expecting a come-on.
    • I come looking for a job
      But I get no offers
      Just a come-on from the whores on Seventh Avenue1969, Paul Simon, Simon & Garfunkel, “The Boxer”, Bridge over Troubled Water, Columbia Records
  3. (slang) A bad actor whose talents do not extend far beyond walking onto the stage.
    • When the public no longer rushed to the box-office to buy such synthetic exaltations of the spirit, pitchmen like Jerome K. Jerome and the aforesaid Kennedy got out their theopathic apparatus and had at the trade with elixirs in which actors, their faces chalked into a pallor exceeding Nicky...1975, George Jean Nathan, Charles Angoff, The Theatre Book of the Year, 1942-1943, page 82

come-on meaning in Malayalam and Indonesian

come-on in Malayalam

incentive, inducement, attraction
പ്രേരണ, പ്രലോഭനം, പ്രലോഭനവസ്തു, പ്രോത്സാഹനം, ആകർഷണം, ഇര

come-on in Indonesian

inducement
ayolah

Forms of come-on

pluralcome-ons

Origin of come-on

Deverbal from come on to. First use appears c. 1897, in the publications of Edward W. Townsend. See cite below.

Questions about come-on

What does come-on mean?
Come-on means something intended to attract, as in an advertisement.
What is come-on in Malayalam?
Come-on in Malayalam is പ്രേരണ, പ്രലോഭനം, പ്രലോഭനവസ്തു. See Come-on meaning in Malayalam.
What part of speech is come-on?
Come-on is a noun.
How do you pronounce come-on?
Come-on is pronounced /ˈkʌmˌɑn/ (Northern US).
What is the plural of come-on?
The plural of come-on is come-ons.

Words near come-on in the dictionary

  1. come-hithery
  2. come-o'-will
  3. come-o'-wills
  4. come-off
  5. come-offs
  6. come-on
  7. come-ons
  8. come-outer
  9. come-outerism
  10. come-outers
  11. come-outism

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: come-on (page history and authors); come-on (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). 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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Persent101-come-on.wav.

Cite this entry: “come-on.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/come-on. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.