come at

English

Pronunciation

Audio(General Australian): (file)

Verb

come at (third-person singular simple presentcomes at,present participlecoming at,simple pastcame at,past participlecome at)

(obsolete) Tocome to; toattend.(Can we add anexample for this sense?)
(obsolete) Toenter intosexual relations with; tocome on to (someone).
Toget to, especially witheffort ordifficulty.
His precise meaning was not easy tocome at.
Toattack (someone); toharass (someone); tochallenge(someone) to afight.
As I backed away, hecame 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′dcome at the Australian Labor Party from the left. He thought he′d tie up the Catholic Church and the East Timor constituency bycoming 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 justcome at you, like the navy guycomes at you, then the air force, ′cause they′ve got to get a quota I guess, and then the navy guycame 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′dcome at us again in February or March. Even if we′d got through the parliamentary session, they′d keepcoming at us.
(Australia,New Zealand,transitive,slang) Toaccept (a situation); to agree to do; to try.^[1]
Nah, mate – I′m not going tocome at that again. Too risky.
- 1922, Australian Parliament,Parliamentary Debates‎^[1], volume100, page1139:
  Mr. O'Loghlen: Do you think a factory wouldcome at that?
- 2000 October 24, Gary Meadows, “Is Scott Steel neutral in act-b? (was: The Great Australian Confusion)”, inaus.culture.true-blue‎^[2] (Usenet):
  Somehow I don′t think ausadmin or news server managers at large wouldcome at that idea.
- 2006, Kenneth Stanley Inglis,This is the ABC: The Australian Broadcasting Commission, 1932-1983‎^[3], page174:
  […]he would have liked to be a roving correspondent for both the ABC and the BBC, but the BBC would notcome at that arrangement.