Word.ws English Dictionary

come up short

come up short verb: synonym of fall short.

Verb

come up short (third-person singular simple present comes up short, present participle coming up short, simple past came up short, past participle come up short)

  1. Synonym of fall short.
    • They kept coming up short every time they closed out the register.
    • The register kept coming up short every time they closed it out.
    Synonyms:
    fall short

Synonyms of come up short

Forms of come up short

third-person singular presentcomes up short
present participlecoming up short
pastcame up short
past participlecome up short

Questions about come up short

What does come up short mean?
Come up short means synonym of fall short.
What part of speech is come up short?
Come up short is a verb.
What is the past tense of come up short?
The past tense of come up short is came up short.

Words near come up short in the dictionary

  1. come up against
  2. come up and bite
  3. come up and bitten
  4. come up from behind
  5. come up roses
  6. come up short
  7. come up smelling like a rose
  8. come up smelling of roses
  9. come up snake eyes
  10. come up to
  11. come up trumps

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: come up short (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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