came

Pluralcames

1. 1
   verb

   Past tense of come.

   A cold wind came down from the mountains overnight.

   The letter came two weeks after she had stopped expecting it.

   Note

   The ordinary past of the movement verb stands on its own, with no helper: the wind came, the letter came. Once have or had enters, standard English switches to come (she had come home), and putting came in that slot is the mark of the nonstandard participle. The same spelling also belongs to an unrelated glazing word with a history of its own.

2. 2
   verbnonstandard

   Nonstandard past participle of come. Standard English uses come (had come, not had came).

   We had came all that way for nothing, he complained.

   Nobody could believe how far the team had came that season.

   Note

   Standard grammar rejects this participle, but it turns up wherever have or had comes first: must have came, unlikely to have came. It is not confined to casual talk. The Parliamentary Debates of 1812 have it, and so does Kaspar Richter's Thailand's Growth Path (2006). In careful writing or formal speech, use come after an auxiliary: had come, would have come.

3. 3
   preposition

   Used before a following event, period, or change of state to mark that it arrived in the past after a time of waiting or anticipation.

   Came the morning of the trial, she was finally ready to speak.

   Came the long-awaited harvest, the village celebrated for three days.

   Note

   This is the past of come frozen in an inverted position, where it now works like a preposition. The verb leads and the awaited time follows, as in Came the dawn. Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson's If Winter Comes (1921) repeats it (Came Christmas…, Came June, 1915) to mark moments that arrived without the promised end. It belongs to storytelling and literary narration, not to everyday report.

4. 4
   verb

   Past tense of cum.

   He came too quickly, before either of them was ready.

   She came with a soft cry and went limp against him.

   Note

   Here the past belongs to a vulgar slang verb, and the spelling gives nothing away. In the present, the sexual verb is often written cum, itself a respelling of come. In the past that difference disappears, because the everyday past is spelled identically. Only context tells them apart, so an innocent sentence with came can be read the wrong way.

5. 5
   nouncountable

   A grooved strip of metal, traditionally lead or brass, used to hold panes of glass together in glazing.

   Like the metal channels that frame and grip each small pane in a stained-glass window.

   She soldered every came where the strips crossed to lock the panel into shape.

   Restorers replaced the buckled cames that had let the medieval glass sag.

   Similarlead

   Note

   This glazing word only shares the verb's spelling and is unrelated to it. It appears in the 17th century and its origin is unknown. It may come from kame, "a ridge," and Scots came, "comb," is a possible relative. Unlike the verb forms, it is a countable noun with the plural cames. Today the strip may be stainless steel rather than lead or brass.

Showing meanings only. Show all 5