Word.ws English Dictionary

come up and bite

come up and bite verb: to be extremely obvious to (someone), to be impossible for (someone) to miss and ignore.

Verb

come up and bite (third-person singular simple present comes up and bites, present participle coming up and biting, simple past came up and bit, past participle come up and bitten)

  1. (colloquial, idiomatic) To be extremely obvious to (someone), to be impossible for (someone) to miss and ignore.
    • These new recruits are terrible soldiers. They wouldn't know what to do with an enemy if one came up and bit them.
  2. (colloquial, idiomatic) To clearly expose itself to (someone).
    • You really think you can convince the committee? Come on! You wouldn't know charisma if it came up and bit you.

Forms of come up and bite

third-person singular presentcomes up and bites
present participlecoming up and biting
pastcame up and bit
past participlecome up and bitten

Questions about come up and bite

What does come up and bite mean?
Come up and bite means to be extremely obvious to (someone), to be impossible for (someone) to miss and ignore.
What part of speech is come up and bite?
Come up and bite is a verb.
What is the past tense of come up and bite?
The past tense of come up and bite is came up and bit.

Words near come up and bite in the dictionary

  1. come undone
  2. come unhinged
  3. come unstuck
  4. come up
  5. come up against
  6. come up and bite
  7. come up and bitten
  8. come up from behind
  9. come up roses
  10. come up short
  11. come up smelling like a rose

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: come up and bite (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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