Word.ws English Dictionary

happen along

happen along verb: to arrive by chance; to occur by happenstance.

Verb

happen along (third-person singular simple present happens along, present participle happening along, simple past and past participle happened along)

  1. (idiomatic, intransitive) To arrive by chance; to occur by happenstance.
    • "Now, if a rattling good earthquake were to happen along, you might awake in the morning to find yourself on an island, or even under water."1892, Julian Hawthorne, chapter 1, in The Golden Fleece
    • "[W]e can't 'spect a cyclone to happen along and take us to the Emerald City now."1909, L. Frank Baum, chapter 11, in The Road to Oz

Forms of happen along

third-person singular presenthappens along
present participlehappening along
past participlehappened along
pasthappened along

Questions about happen along

What does happen along mean?
Happen along means to arrive by chance; to occur by happenstance.
What part of speech is happen along?
Happen along is a verb.
What is the past tense of happen along?
The past tense of happen along is happened along.

Words near happen along in the dictionary

  1. happed
  2. Happel
  3. Happels
  4. happen
  5. happen across
  6. happen along
  7. happen by
  8. happen on
  9. happen upon
  10. happen'd
  11. happenable

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: happen along (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-happen along.ogg.

Cite this entry: “happen along.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/happen_along. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.