come down
verb10 senses
- 1To descend, fall down, collapse.
- 2To be demolished.
- 3To decrease.
- 4To reach or release a decision.
- 5To be passed through time.
- 6To return from an elevated state of consciousness…
- 7To rain.
- 8To graduate from university, especially an Oxbridge university.
- 9Shortening of of come down the (pike, line, etc.) To be…
- 10To behave in a particular way.
1
To descend, fall down, collapse.
- A tree came down and hit me on the head.
- After a clap of thunder, down came the rain.
4 more examples
- Down you come this moment, you rapscallion!
- 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.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Genesis 45:9:
- 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.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:
- 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.1995, “Goldfinger”, performed by Ash:
2
To be demolished.
- The damage sustained in the fire is so great that the whole building will have to come down.
3
To decrease.
- Real estate prices have come down since the peak of the boom.
4
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
To be passed through time.
- Much wisdom has come down in the form of proverbs.
6
Idiomatic To return from an elevated state of consciousness (especially when drug-induced) or emotion.
- He finally came down from his post-bonus high.
- Navarre is in superb control of his prose, distorting it more and more as the poppers mint Luc's mind, clarifying it as he comes down.1982 February 6, Edmund Carvale, “Recovering a Literary Legacy”, in Gay Community News, volume 9, number 28, page 8:
3 more examples
- In the middle of the night, it feels alright / But then tomorrow morning / Ooh, ooh, then you come down1995, “Sorted For E’s and Wizz”, in Jarvis Cocker (lyrics), Different Class, performed by Pulp:
- 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.2005 January 30, Drake Bennett, “Dr. Ecstasy”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:
- 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.2015 June 28, “It was 20 years ago today: the year British dance music went wild”, in The Observer:
7
UK To rain.
- It's coming down heavily now.
8
UK To graduate from university, especially an Oxbridge university.
- Raju had got a job with a law firm in Singapore after coming down from Oxford.2008, Preeta Samarasan, Evening is the Whole Day, Fourth Estate, page 24:
9
Shortening of of come down the (pike, line, etc.) To be about to happen; to occur; to transpire.
10
Slang To behave in a particular way.
- He's been coming down angry all day.
- Derived terms
- come-down, comedown, come down on, come down to, come down with, come down with one's dust, come down with the dust