come down

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

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

1. (intransitive) To descend, fall down, collapse.

   A tree came down and hit me on the head.

   • 1611, The Holy Bible,  (King James Version), London: Robert Barker, , →OCLC, Genesis 45:9:

     Haste ye, and go up to my father, and say unto him, Thus saith thy son Joseph, God hath made me lord of all Egypt: come down unto me, tarry not.

   • 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter IV, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC, page 46:

     No matter how early I came down, I would find him on the veranda, smoking cigarettes, or otherwise his man would be there with a message to say that his master would shortly join me if I would kindly wait.

   • 1995, “Goldfinger”, performed by Ash:

     I'm feeling so alive, feeling so real / On a stormy night, the rain is coming down / Rain like never before / I've got some records on, some bottles of wine / On a stormy night, the rain is lashing down / And I'm waiting for her.

2. (intransitive) To be demolished.

   The damage sustained in the fire is so great that the whole building will have to come down.

3. (intransitive) To decrease.

   Real estate prices have come down since the peak of the boom.

4. (intransitive) To reach or release a decision.

   I can't guess which way the board will come down on the project.

   The decision in Doe v. Smith came down this morning.

5. (intransitive) To be passed through time.

   Much wisdom has come down in the form of proverbs.

6. (intransitive, idiomatic) To return from an elevated state of consciousness (especially when drug-induced) or emotion.

   He finally came down from his post-bonus high.

   • 1995, “Sorted For E’s and Wizz”, in Jarvis Cocker (lyrics), Different Class, performed by Pulp:

     In the middle of the night, it feels alright / But then tomorrow morning / Ooh, ooh, then you come down

   • 2005 January 30, Drake Bennett, “Dr. Ecstasy”, in The New York Times‎, →ISSN:

     In 1967, a Shulgin compound called DOM enjoyed a brief vogue in Haight-Ashbury under the name STP, at doses several times larger than those at which Shulgin had found significant psychoactive effects, and emergency rooms saw a spike in the number of people coming in thinking they would never come down.

   • 2015 June 28, “It was 20 years ago today: the year British dance music went wild”, in The Observer‎:

     Britpop had revitalised rock, and an unprecedented explosion in dance music – sparked off by a second consecutive sunny and idyllic Glastonbury – transformed how Britain thought, listened, partied and came down afterwards.

7. (impersonal, UK) To rain.

   It's coming down heavily now.

8. (intransitive, UK) To graduate from university, especially an Oxbridge university.
   • 2008, Preeta Samarasan, Evening is the Whole Day, Fourth Estate, page 24:

     Raju had got a job with a law firm in Singapore after coming down from Oxford.

9. Shortening of of come down the (pike, line, etc.) To be about to happen; to occur; to transpire.
10. (intransitive, slang) To behave in a particular way.

    He's been coming down angry all day.

• downcome