Word.ws English Dictionary

comes in from the cold

comes in from the cold is the third-person singular simple present indicative of come in from the cold.

Meaning of come in from the cold

Verb

come in from the cold (third-person singular simple present comes in from the cold, present participle coming in from the cold, simple past came in from the cold, past participle come in from the cold)

  1. (idiomatic, intransitive) Of a spy: to return home after having gone undercover in enemy territory.
    • I mean … one can't be out in the cold all the time; one has to come in from the cold … do you see what I mean?1963 September, John le Carré [pseudonym; David John Moore Cornwell], “The Circus”, in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Coward-McCann, published 1964, →OCLC...
  2. (figuratively, idiomatic, intransitive) To gain widespread acceptance in a group or society, especially where there was not any before.
    • Long an outsider in Western politics, Portugal came in from the cold after the 1974 Carnation Revolution.

Questions about comes in from the cold

What is comes in from the cold the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Comes in from the cold is the third-person singular simple present indicative of come in from the cold.

Words near comes in from the cold in the dictionary

  1. comes home
  2. comes home by weeping cross
  3. comes home to roost
  4. comes in
  5. comes in for
  6. comes in from the cold
  7. comes in handy
  8. comes in hot
  9. comes in useful
  10. comes into
  11. comes into being

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: comes in from the cold (page history and authors); come in from the cold (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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