come at

English

Pronunciation

• Audio (General Australian):

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Verb

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

1. (obsolete) To come to; to attend. (Can we add an example for this sense?)
2. (obsolete) To enter into sexual relations with; to come on to (someone).
3. To get to, especially with effort or difficulty.

   His precise meaning was not easy to come at.

4. To attack (someone); to harass (someone); to challenge(someone) to a fight.

   As I backed away, he came at me with a knife.

   • a. 2001, Paul Keating, quoted in 2001, Brett Evans, The Life and Soul of the Party: A Portrait of Modern Labor, page 17,

     ‘He thought he′d come at the Australian Labor Party from the left. He thought he′d tie up the Catholic Church and the East Timor constituency by coming at Labor from that quarter. That′s what it has been all about.’

   • 2010, Michael Caulfield, editor, The Voices of War: Australians Tell Their Stories from World War I to the Present, unnumbered page:

     Well I went to the recruiting office in Perth and the navy guy bailed me up first, ′cause they just come at you, like the navy guy comes at you, then the air force, ′cause they′ve got to get a quota I guess, and then the navy guy came at me and I told him about aviation and that I was keen on aviation and he′s off on his spiel about Sea Kings [helicopters] and all this sort of stuff and I think he might have fired guns or watched a radar or something on a boat somewhere, but he didn′t really know very much and then the army guy overheard him. He said ‘Aah. We′ve got all the helicopters, come over here.’

   • 2010, Bob Ellis, One Hundred Days of Summer: How We Got to Where We Are, unnumbered page:

     And if we got through that, they′d come at us again in February or March. Even if we′d got through the parliamentary session, they′d keep coming at us.

5. (Australia, New Zealand, transitive, slang) To accept (a situation); to agree to do; to try.

   Nah, mate – I′m not going to come at that again. Too risky.

   • 1922, Australian Parliament, Parliamentary Debates‎^[1], volume 100, page 1139:

     Mr. O'Loghlen: Do you think a factory would come at that?

   • 2000 October 24, Gary Meadows, “Is Scott Steel neutral in act-b? (was: The Great Australian Confusion)”, in aus.culture.true-blue‎^[2] (Usenet):

     Somehow I don′t think ausadmin or news server managers at large would come at that idea.

   • 2006, Kenneth Stanley Inglis, This is the ABC: The Australian Broadcasting Commission, 1932-1983‎^[3], page 174:

     […] he would have liked to be a roving correspondent for both the ABC and the BBC, but the BBC would not come at that arrangement.

Derived terms

• come-at-able
• come at me

Translations

To attack, harass, or challenge

• Finnish: hyökätä (fi), käydä päälle, käydä kimppuun
• French: attaquer (fr)
• Polish: atakować / nachodzić
• Portuguese: atacar (pt)
• Spanish: atacar (es), achorarse (es) (Andes)

Anagrams

• came to, camote, comate