come up

verb

came up; come up; coming up; comes up

intransitive verb

1

: rise sense 6

2

: to come near : make an approach

came up and introduced himself

3

: to rise in rank or status

an officer who came up from the ranks

4

a

: to come to attention or consideration

the question never came up

b

: to occur in the course of time

any problem that may come up

5

: to turn out to be

the coin came up tails

6

chiefly dialectal : grow up

see also:

come up empty come up with

Synonyms of come up

• come
• draw on
• close
• approach
• close in

Examples of come up in a Sentence

the girl came up to the counter and asked if she could have her order prepared to go

let me know if anything else comes up during the project

Recent Examples on the Web

Hundreds of people annually try to reach the rocky summit; many come up short. — CBS News, 30 July 2026

That will be tested to its limits when Madrid come up against low blocks. — Anantaajith Raghuraman, New York Times, 30 July 2026

The patches were posted to the Linux Kernel mailing list by Meta programmer David Vernet, who came up with a novel solution to a problem with Linux gaming on AMD. — Jon Martindale, PC Magazine, 30 July 2026

Ewers rolled out to the left, came up short and one-hopped a comeback to Tutu Atwell. — Tyler M. Carmona, Miami Herald, 30 July 2026

Word History

First Known Use

before the 12th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Rhymes for come up

• buttercup
• backup
• blowup
• breakup
• buildup
• checkup
• cleanup
• holdup
• hookup
• lineup
• lockup
• makeup

Kids Definition

come up

verb

1

: rise entry 1 sense 4

the sun comes up in an hour

2

: to come near or approach

came up and introduced himself

3

: to come to attention : introduce sense 4

the question came up again