Word.ws English Dictionary

subvene

subvene verb: to arrive or happen so as to help or support.

Verb

subvene (third-person singular simple present subvenes, present participle subvening, simple past and past participle subvened)

  1. (intransitive) To arrive or happen so as to help or support.
    • A future state must needs subvene to prevent the whole edifice from falling into ruin.1738–1741, William Warburton, The Divine Legation of Moses […], volume (please specify |volume=I, II.1, or II.2), London: […] Fletcher Gyles, […], →OCLC
  2. (rare, transitive) To subsidize or defray.

Forms of subvene

third-person singular presentsubvenes
present participlesubvening
past participlesubvened
pastsubvened

Origin of subvene

From Latin subveniō (“come to the aid of”), from sub (“under, up towards”) + veniō (“come”).

Questions about subvene

What does subvene mean?
Subvene means to arrive or happen so as to help or support.
What part of speech is subvene?
Subvene is a verb.
What is the past tense of subvene?
The past tense of subvene is subvened.

Words near subvene in the dictionary

  1. subvectors
  2. subvelocities
  3. subvelocity
  4. subvendor
  5. subvendors
  6. subvene
  7. subvened
  8. subvenes
  9. subvening
  10. subvent
  11. subventaneous

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: subvene (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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Cite this entry: “subvene.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/subvene. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.