"come down the pike" meaning in English

See come down the pike in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Forms: comes down the pike [present, singular, third-person], coming down the pike [participle, present], came down the pike [past], come down the pike [participle, past]
Etymology: From pike, short for turnpike (“toll expressway”). Etymology templates: {{m|en|pike|id=turnpike}} pike, {{m|en|turnpike|gloss=toll expressway|id=toll road}} turnpike (“toll expressway”) Head templates: {{en-verb|come<,,came,come> down the pike}} come down the pike (third-person singular simple present comes down the pike, present participle coming down the pike, simple past came down the pike, past participle come down the pike)
  1. (chiefly US, of an event, thing, person) To emerge, come up; be about to happen; to approach or arrive on the scene; to present (itself or oneself). Tags: US, person Synonyms: come down the line, come down the road
    Sense id: en-come_down_the_pike-en-verb-TzUpvTXQ Categories (other): American English, English entries with incorrect language header

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for come down the pike meaning in English (2.8kB)

{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "pike",
        "id": "turnpike"
      },
      "expansion": "pike",
      "name": "m"
    },
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "turnpike",
        "gloss": "toll expressway",
        "id": "toll road"
      },
      "expansion": "turnpike (“toll expressway”)",
      "name": "m"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "From pike, short for turnpike (“toll expressway”).",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "comes down the pike",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "coming down the pike",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "came down the pike",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "come down the pike",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "come<,,came,come> down the pike"
      },
      "expansion": "come down the pike (third-person singular simple present comes down the pike, present participle coming down the pike, simple past came down the pike, past participle come down the pike)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "American English",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1902, Ralph Henry Barbour, chapter 11, in Behind the Line",
          "text": "\"[T]hey're the finest football leaders that ever came down the pike.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1949 November 14, “Art: Many Ways”, in Time, archived from the original on 2016-03-07",
          "text": "Alfred Stieglitz was the best photographer ever to come down the pike.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2014 May 26, Amy Verner, “From Humble Sneaker to Luxury Icon”, in The New York Times, →ISSN",
          "text": "“For me, it's a harbinger of larger cultural changes coming down the pike.”",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2023 February 23, Michael Levenson, quoting Sheree Thomas, “Science Fiction Magazines Battle a Flood of Chatbot-Generated Stories”, in The New York Times, →ISSN",
          "text": "“I knew it was coming on down the pike, just not at the rate it hit us,” said Sheree Renée Thomas, the editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, which was founded in 1949.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To emerge, come up; be about to happen; to approach or arrive on the scene; to present (itself or oneself)."
      ],
      "id": "en-come_down_the_pike-en-verb-TzUpvTXQ",
      "links": [
        [
          "emerge",
          "emerge"
        ],
        [
          "come up",
          "come up"
        ],
        [
          "happen",
          "happen"
        ],
        [
          "approach",
          "approach"
        ],
        [
          "arrive",
          "arrive"
        ]
      ],
      "qualifier": "thing",
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(chiefly US, of an event, thing, person) To emerge, come up; be about to happen; to approach or arrive on the scene; to present (itself or oneself)."
      ],
      "raw_tags": [
        "of an event"
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "come down the line"
        },
        {
          "word": "come down the road"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "US",
        "person"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "come down the pike"
}
{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "pike",
        "id": "turnpike"
      },
      "expansion": "pike",
      "name": "m"
    },
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "turnpike",
        "gloss": "toll expressway",
        "id": "toll road"
      },
      "expansion": "turnpike (“toll expressway”)",
      "name": "m"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "From pike, short for turnpike (“toll expressway”).",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "comes down the pike",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "coming down the pike",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "came down the pike",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "come down the pike",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "come<,,came,come> down the pike"
      },
      "expansion": "come down the pike (third-person singular simple present comes down the pike, present participle coming down the pike, simple past came down the pike, past participle come down the pike)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "American English",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English verbs",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1902, Ralph Henry Barbour, chapter 11, in Behind the Line",
          "text": "\"[T]hey're the finest football leaders that ever came down the pike.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1949 November 14, “Art: Many Ways”, in Time, archived from the original on 2016-03-07",
          "text": "Alfred Stieglitz was the best photographer ever to come down the pike.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2014 May 26, Amy Verner, “From Humble Sneaker to Luxury Icon”, in The New York Times, →ISSN",
          "text": "“For me, it's a harbinger of larger cultural changes coming down the pike.”",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2023 February 23, Michael Levenson, quoting Sheree Thomas, “Science Fiction Magazines Battle a Flood of Chatbot-Generated Stories”, in The New York Times, →ISSN",
          "text": "“I knew it was coming on down the pike, just not at the rate it hit us,” said Sheree Renée Thomas, the editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, which was founded in 1949.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To emerge, come up; be about to happen; to approach or arrive on the scene; to present (itself or oneself)."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "emerge",
          "emerge"
        ],
        [
          "come up",
          "come up"
        ],
        [
          "happen",
          "happen"
        ],
        [
          "approach",
          "approach"
        ],
        [
          "arrive",
          "arrive"
        ]
      ],
      "qualifier": "thing",
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(chiefly US, of an event, thing, person) To emerge, come up; be about to happen; to approach or arrive on the scene; to present (itself or oneself)."
      ],
      "raw_tags": [
        "of an event"
      ],
      "tags": [
        "US",
        "person"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "come down the line"
    },
    {
      "word": "come down the road"
    }
  ],
  "word": "come down the pike"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.