Word.ws English Dictionary

come to hand

come to hand verb: to become available, often unexpectedly, or randomly.

Verb

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

  1. To become available, often unexpectedly, or randomly.
    • She fought off the intruder with whatever came to hand.
    • Secondly, I continue to base my concepts on intensive study of a limited suite of collections, rather than superficial study of every packet that comes to hand.1992, Rudolf M[athias] Schuster, The Hepaticae and Anthocerotae of North America: East of the Hundredth Meridian, volume V, Chicago, Ill.: Field Museum of Natural History, →ISBN, page vii
  2. (US) To perform well, to come under control.
    • The horse came to hand, and won first prize.

Forms of come to hand

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

Questions about come to hand

What does come to hand mean?
Come to hand means to become available, often unexpectedly, or randomly.
What part of speech is come to hand?
Come to hand is a verb.
What is the past tense of come to hand?
The past tense of come to hand is came to hand.

Words near come to hand in the dictionary

  1. come to find out
  2. come to fruition
  3. come to grief
  4. come to grips
  5. come to grips with
  6. come to hand
  7. come to Jesus
  8. come to life
  9. come to light
  10. come to mention it
  11. come to mind

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: come to hand (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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