Word.ws English Dictionary

come a long way

come a long way verb: to make significant progress.

Verb

come a long way (third-person singular simple present comes a long way, present participle coming a long way, simple past came a long way, past participle come a long way)

  1. (idiomatic) To make significant progress.
    • Computer-generated graphics have come a long way in the past few decades.

Forms of come a long way

third-person singular presentcomes a long way
present participlecoming a long way
pastcame a long way
past participlecome a long way

Questions about come a long way

What does come a long way mean?
Come a long way means to make significant progress.
What part of speech is come a long way?
Come a long way is a verb.
What is the past tense of come a long way?
The past tense of come a long way is came a long way.

Words near come a long way in the dictionary

  1. come
  2. come 'ead
  3. come 'ed
  4. come a cropper
  5. come a gutser
  6. come a long way
  7. come about
  8. come across
  9. come across with
  10. come after
  11. come again

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: come a long way (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-come a long way.ogg.

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