The Phrasal Verb 'Come Back' Explained
- Phrasal Verbs Explained
- 21 hours ago
- 12 min read
An explanation of the different meanings of the English phrasal verb 'come back' from a native speaker, with lots of examples in context
Hello and welcome to my website for English learners all about phrasal verbs where I explain their different meanings to help you understand, learn and use them like a native.
Do you know all of the different ways to use the phrasal verb 'come back'? Did you know that there are at least 5 different ways to use it in English? Don't worry if you didn't because in this post, I will give you clear and details explanations of these meanings and applications and provide you with lots of example sentences in context to show you how they are used naturally by native speakers. In addition, we will also look at the noun 'comeback' and some well-known expressions that the phrasal verb 'come back' appears in. So, without further ado, let's dive into the wonderful world of the phrasal verb 'come back'....
TABLE OF CONTENTSÂ (Click to jump to each one)
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THE BASICS
COME BACK: KEY INFORMATION
Usage | Common |
Number of meanings | 5 |
Past tense forms | Came back / Come back |
Separable? | No |
If you're new to Phrasal Verbs Explained, I should explain that I like to start each phrasal verb post by looking at the individual words that form the phrasal verb that we will be looking at, which in this case are 'come' and 'back'.
Come - The verb 'to come' is an extremely common irregular verb in English, so I imagine that you are already very familiar with it. It has a lot of different uses and meanings in English, but the main one is to talk about a movement towards where the speaker is, was or will be; in this sense it is the opposite of the verb 'to go'. Other notable meanings of 'to come' in certain contexts are 'to arrive' and 'to happen', among others. Due to how common it is, you can find 'to come' in a large number of phrasal verbs and expressions in English.
Winter is coming, so I had better buy some warm clothes!
How many people are coming to your party?
My Dad came home late last night.
What time do you plan to come tomorrow?
The night had not yet come.
Back - The prepositional particle 'back' is not one that we see often in phrasal verbs and its functions are fairly consistent when it does appear in them. One of the main ideas that it carries, which is key for this phrasal verb, is 'to return to a previous place or state' (go back). Moreover, other ideas that it can add are reversal (take back), remembering (look back) and delay (hold back).
So, now that we have covered the basics, let's now move onto the different meanings of the phrasal verb 'come back'....
MEANING 1: To return
CEFR Language Level | A2 - Elementary |
Usage | Common |
Where is it used? | Everywhere |
Potential synonyms | To return, to recur, to get back |
Separable? | No |
We will make a start in a nice and easy way with the most common and logical of all of the applications of the phrasal verb 'come back: 'to return'.
This application is just a combination of the literal meanings of the verb 'to come' i.e. to move towards a place where the speaker is and 'back' to refer to a place that you have already been to. Note that as this is with the verb 'to come', we will only use it to talk about a return to the place where the person is speaking. If we are talking about returning to a different place, we would use 'go back' instead.
We use 'come back' in this way to mean to return to a place all the time; in fact we say it more often than 'return', particularly in spoken and informal English.
I’ll come back and see you after work
Jeanette came back to the office to pick up her keys.
When do you think you will come back from your trip?
Pete came back late last night.
Please come back and finish the form as soon as you can.
They came back to the restaurant because they had forgotten to pay!
We love it here and we are definitely going to come back next year.
My cat came back safely after the storm.
Don’t worry; I’ll come back soon and check on you.
We've come back to the city where we grew up for Christmas.
In addition to people and animals coming back to a place, there are other less obvious ways that we can use 'come back' to mean 'to return' that we will look at later in the post. One way that I want to make you aware of now is in reference to pain and discomfort. If you have a pain or illness that you suffer, which goes away and then happens again, you can say it 'comes back'. An example of this would be if you have a headache and take a tablet to make it go away. When the tablet stops working, the headache is likely to come back again.
Caroline's knee pain came back when she started running again.
Hugh's cough came back during the winter.
The infection came back a few days after treatment ended.
My allergy symptoms always come back in the spring.
MEANING 2: To remember something again
CEFR Language Level | B2 - Upper intermediate |
Usage | Common |
Where is it used? | Everywhere |
Potential synonyms | To remember, to recall, to remind |
Separable? | No |
Another way that we can use the phrasal verb 'come back' in a sense of returning is our second application, which is 'to remember something again'.
If something comes back to you in this sense, it means that you previously knew or were able to remember something but had forgotten it until the memory returned to your brain again. We can use this to talk about things from many years ago or just a few hours ago; the time span is not important here, just the fact that you are able to remember something again after a period of forgetting it.
The resurfaced memory could be anything from a forgotten fact, a name, a memory of a childhood holiday or how to do something like change a lightbulb or make a cake.
Sometimes, we add the additional word 'flooding' between 'come' and 'back' to add emphasis and describe when lots of memories of something come back to you at once, often triggered by something, a bit like water in a flood.
The shopkeeper's name suddenly came back to me as I left the shop.
Some of the details of that day are starting to come back now.
Don't tell me; it'll come back to me in a minute.
The memories came flooding back to me when I was listening to the song.
I couldn’t remember the answer at first, but it came back to me later.
Everything came flooding back once I saw the old photos.
Annoyingly, the right words came back to me once I had finished the exam.
The story slowly came back to him.
After a couple of days in Paris, my high-school French started to come back.
MEANING 3: To become fashionable again
CEFR Language Level | B2 - Upper intermediate |
Usage | Medium |
Where is it used? | Everywhere |
Potential synonyms | To come back in, to resurge, to revive, |
Separable? | No |
We will now move on to our third meaning of the phrasal verb 'come back', which is one for you if you like to keep up with the latest trends and means 'to become fashionable again'.
There is a well-known saying in English that "fashion goes in circles" and the older you get, the more you realise that this is indeed true. What this expression means is that everything that is fashionable at one time stops being trendy for a period and then becomes fashionable again in some form or another at a future time. When this happens, we can say that the trendy thing has "come back", or "come back into fashion".
When using this application, it can be in reference to anything from clothes, hairstyles, interior design, music styles and even colours. It just has to be something that used to be popular with people, stopped being popular for a time and then became popular again.
Note that when talking about when something stops being trendy, we use the phrasal verb 'go out (of fashion)'.
Baggy jeans have come back into fashion in a big way.
Vinyl records are coming back among younger music fans.
That weird hairstyle from the ’90s has come back.
Retro sneakers came back in a big way last year but people are losing interest again now.
Polaroid cameras are set to come back as a popular trend in the next few months.
Vintage furniture has come back in modern interior design again.
Minimalist design is finally coming back after years of bold styles.
Thrift shopping has come back as a mainstream trend once more.
MEANING 4: To reply to someone
CEFR Language Level | C1 - Advanced |
Usage | Medium |
Where is it used? | Everywhere |
Potential synonyms | To reply, to respond, to retort |
Separable? | No |
Next, we have our fourth application of 'come back', which is one that means 'to reply to someone' and can be used in both a neutral and a negative sense.
We mainly hear this application of 'come back' being used in a neutral sense in the world of business and professional English. We often use it instead of verbs like 'to reply' or 'to respond' to talk about receiving answers to questions and requests, particularly in email form. Of course, it isn't just in business English that we use this, however that is overwhelmingly where you hear it the most in this way.
I emailed the Account Manager this morning, but she hasn’t come back to me yet.
Please come back to me once you’ve checked the details on this.
The MD said he’d come back with an answer by Friday.
They promised to come back to us shortly after the meeting.
Please could you come back to me later on that?
In contrast, the negative way of using this application of 'come back' is usually heard more in spoken English. Typically, it is used to express when one person responds to what another has said in an angry, irritable or unkind way. This is something that you may hear in an argument between people or when one person is annoyed or frustrated with the other.
Alternatively, you may also hear this when someone responds to what someone else has said very quickly or in a witty and humorous way. Again, this would be in the form of an argument or in a playful exchange of teasing comments and remarks (known as banter).
He insulted Kelly, and she came back with an even sharper remark.
Juli came back angrily, telling him to mind his own business and leave her alone.
Billy came back with a sarcastic comment that silenced the room.
The student came back with an irritated response.
Ryan came back snapping that it wasn’t his fault.
I expected an apology from Morgan, but she came back with attitude instead.
Furthermore, when used in this negative, aggressive way, we sometimes add the additional preposition 'at', to specify the person who the negative response is aimed towards.
Bella came back at her husband for questioning her honesty.
Derek criticised Fi's work, and she understandably came back at him.
I made a joke about Tom, and he immediately came back at me defensively.
MEANING 5: To recover
CEFR Language Level | C1 - Advanced |
Usage | Medium |
Where is it used? | Everywhere |
Potential synonyms | To recover, to rally, to revive, to rebound |
Separable? | No |
We have now come to our fifth and final application of 'come back', which is 'to recover' and brings us full circle (a bit like fashion) back to the first application of 'to return' again 😊
To give you a bit more detail and be more specific, what I mean by 'to recover' here is to return to a normal, functional or desirable state or situation and it can be used to talk about people, things or situations.
Of course, if something has to return to a good or positive state, we can infer that something has to go wrong or not go well with it before it gets better again and it is with this improving action that we use this application of 'come back'.
There are several different situations in which this final usage of 'come back' can be applied, so I will outline them separately for you....
Perhaps one of the most frequent situations in which this application of 'come back' can be heard is when talking about games, competitions and sport. If a player or a team is losing a game or competition but is able to recover, take the lead and win, you can say that the player or team came back from a deficit.
Birmingham City team came back from a two-goal deficit.
The LA Lakers came back and won in overtime.
Real Madrid is slowly coming back after a difficult season.
The athlete is determined to come back better than before next year.
Another situation where you can hear 'come back' in this sense is to do with health. I know that earlier in the post I explained that we can use 'come back' to talk about a recurring medical problem or symptom, however we can also use it in the exact opposite way to state that your good health has come back following a period of illness or injury.
In addition, we can also use it in this way to talk about the condition of a financial economy or of a business.
After the treatment ended, my health gradually started to come back.
Seb's voice came back after a few days of rest.
After the shock, Neil's confidence gradually came back.
The economy is starting to come back following a bumpy year last year.
The business came back after nearly closing down six months ago.
Lastly, one that you are likely to hear a lot in English language popular music is when people sing about their lovers coming back to them, which is simply just a desire for their ex-partner, who they are no longer in a relationship with, to come back and get back together with them. Of course, it is not only famous singers who use this application and indeed anyone uses it, however I would say that due to its associations with pop songs, it can often sound a bit dramatic when used by us "normal" people.
Juliet begged Romeo to come back to her.
Terry left, but he eventually came back saying that he would never leaver her again.
I don’t think I can trust you if you come back again.
Don’t come back unless you’re serious this time!
BONUS: The noun 'comeback'
Now you know all of the different ways to use the phrasal verb 'come back', but did you know that there is also a noun 'comeback', which is derived from it. Moreover, there are in fact two separate meanings of this noun, both of which come from different applications that we have looked at in the post....
The first of these links back to our fourth application about replying to someone, whereby a 'comeback' is used to mean a quick, witty or critical verbal response to what someone else has said....
The comedian always has the perfect comeback when someone in the audience makes a rude comment
That was a clever comeback; everyone laughed a lot.
I wish I’d thought of a better comeback at the time.
The other meaning that 'comeback' has as a noun links back to the fifth phrasal verb application and means a recovery and is used specifically to talk about sports performances and the careers of famous people, particularly pop music artists. You should also note that we often use the expression 'to make a comeback' here.
The team made an incredible comeback in the final minutes of the match.
That has to be one of the greatest comebacks in football history.
After a decade away from the spotlight, the singer made a stunning comeback.
Critics praised the band's comeback performance at the award show.
BONUS: Idioms and expressions featuring 'come back'
Before you click off the post and go about your daily lives, I just want to make you aware of a couple of useful expressions that exist featuring the phrasal verb 'come back' that you can use to really impress all of your friends and colleagues....
To come back to bite someone - We use this expression to talk about when you do something now that will have an unexpected negative repercussion or consequence for you in the future. In other words, a decision or action that you take now will cause unknown problems at some point for you later.
He thinks he made a good choice but it will come back to bite him when he's older.
I lied on my resume about knowing French, and it came back to bite me when I was assigned to the Paris office.
To come back down to Earth - This idiom is used to talk about when people have to face reality after a period of great excitement or happiness or when someone is forced to see things as they really are, particularly if they are rude or arrogant.
It didn't take us long to come back down to Earth after we got back from our holiday.
Alan thought his startup would be worth millions in a month, but he soon came back down to Earth when the first three investors turned him down.
We have now reached the end of this post and I just want to say thank you for clicking on my post and reading it. I hope that you've enjoyed it and have been able to learn something new about the phrasal verb 'come back'. If you enjoyed this post, please go ahead and check out some of my other posts.
Now it is YOUR turn. Can you think of a sentence yourself using 'come back'. Write it in the comments section below if you can, or alternatively any comments, suggestions or feedback that you may have....don't be shy!!!
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