occur to

phrasal verb

occurred to; occurring to; occurs to

: to be thought of by (someone)

An idea just occurred to me.

It suddenly occurred to her that there was a simpler way to deal with the problem.

Did it never occur to you to ask for help?

Examples of occur to in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

The idea that any other ending was available did not seem to have occurred to anyone, right up to the point when Bernardo Silva and Mateo Kovacic missed their penalties in quick succession, and all of a sudden City found itself on the brink. —Rory Smith, New York Times, 19 Apr. 2024

The description wouldn’t ever have occurred to me, since Branson is so deeply landlocked—notwithstanding the baptismally seductive lakes and rivers that lie amid its hills. —Rafil Kroll-Zaidi, Harper's Magazine, 30 Mar. 2024

Plants can be pruned or trimmed when disease occurs to prevent it from spreading. —Steve Bender, Southern Living, 9 Apr. 2024

These are things that only occur to obsessives who’ve spent hours debating, say, exactly how much reverb should be on the drums in that four-second passage on the second chorus. —Jem Aswad, Variety, 5 Apr. 2024

How this did not occur to Conde is unfathomable and shows a tremendous lack of judgment. —Oliver Darcy, CNN, 26 Mar. 2024

This occurred to me, floating on my back, off a cove in Mallorca. —Sophie Yun Mancini, Condé Nast Traveler, 26 Mar. 2024

Still, enough mayhem occurred to force consequences to face in future movies. —Brian Truitt, USA TODAY, 23 Mar. 2024

The book is so suffused with magical, odd, unexpected, weird, perplexing, fun, terrifying, and hilarious events that occur to and are experienced by the group of translators—some of whom are also writers and poets. —Nathan Jeffers, Hazlitt, 28 Feb. 2024