Word.ws English Dictionary

come to grief

come to grief verb: to suffer a disastrous outcome.

Verb

come to grief (third-person singular simple present comes to grief, present participle coming to grief, simple past came to grief, past participle come to grief)

  1. (idiomatic) To suffer a disastrous outcome.
    • J. R. R. Tolkien
      These elves and half-elves and wizards, they would come to grief perhaps.
    • Immediately beyond Churn Lane the climb begins at 1 in 78, steepening to 1 in 66. Speed soon falls and a number of heavy hop-pickers' specials have come to grief here.1960 March, H. P. White, “The Hawkhurst branch of the Southern Region”, in Trains Illustrated, page 170

come to grief meaning in Tamil and Malayalam

come to grief in Tamil

இடர்ப்படு

come to grief in Malayalam

go wrong, fail, meet with distaster
അപകടത്തിൽ പെടുക, ദുരന്തത്തിൽ കലാശിക്കുക, തകരുക, വിപത്തിലെത്തുക, പരാജയപ്പെടുക, പിഴയ്ക്കുക

Forms of come to grief

third-person singular presentcomes to grief
present participlecoming to grief
pastcame to grief
past participlecome to grief

Questions about come to grief

What does come to grief mean?
Come to grief means to suffer a disastrous outcome.
What is come to grief in Tamil?
Come to grief in Tamil is இடர்ப்படு. See Come to grief meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is come to grief?
Come to grief is a verb.
What is the past tense of come to grief?
The past tense of come to grief is came to grief.

Words near come to grief in the dictionary

  1. come to be
  2. come to bed
  3. come to blows
  4. come to find out
  5. come to fruition
  6. come to grief
  7. come to grips
  8. come to grips with
  9. come to hand
  10. come to Jesus
  11. come to life

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: come to grief (page history and authors); come to grief (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); come to grief (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: en-au-come to grief.ogg.

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