come up roses
come up roses verb: to enter into a condition or situation which is favorable; to develop in a pleasing or advantageous manner.
Verb
come up roses (third-person singular simple present comes up roses, present participle coming up roses, simple past came up roses, past participle come up roses)
- To enter into a condition or situation which is favorable; to develop in a pleasing or advantageous manner.
- All of a sudden, or so it seemed, the world had turned around and they were coming up roses. Now, instead of the bottle being half empty it was suddenly half full, and getting closer and closer to the top.1978, Hubert Selby, Requiem for a Dream, →ISBN, page 127
- "Buck up, mister. Why, with your background, your knowledge, you'll come up roses."1985, Stephen Longstreet, Our Father's House, →ISBN, page 233
Forms of come up roses
| third-person singular present | comes up roses |
|---|---|
| present participle | coming up roses |
| past | came up roses |
| past participle | come up roses |
Origin of come up roses
Coined by lyricist Stephen Sondheim for a song from the musical Gypsy (1959).
Questions about come up roses
- What does come up roses mean?
- Come up roses means to enter into a condition or situation which is favorable; to develop in a pleasing or advantageous manner.
- What part of speech is come up roses?
- Come up roses is a verb.
- What is the past tense of come up roses?
- The past tense of come up roses is came up roses.
Words near come up roses in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: come up roses (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-come up roses.ogg.
Cite this entry: “come up roses.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/come_up_roses. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.