come to nothing

English

Pronunciation

  • Audio (General Australian):(file)

Verb

come to nothing (third-person singular simple present comes to nothing, present participle coming to nothing, simple past came to nothing, past participle come to nothing)

  1. (idiomatic) To fail completely; to have no result.
    The Bank of England's anti-inflation efforts will come to nothing if the US Federal Reserve refuse to join in the plan.
    • 1954 August, Charles E. Lee, “The Swansea & Mumbles Railway 150th Anniversary Celebrations”, in Railway Magazine, page 526:
      Another scheme for electrifying the Swansea & Mumbles also dates from 1898, and was connected with the proposal for the Gower Light Railway from Black Pill to Port Eynon, which came to nothing.
    • 2022 May 18, Peter Robinson, “Rail freight: innovations... and failures”, in RAIL, number 957, page 54, photo caption:
      Yet another road/railer trial that came to nothing.

Synonyms

Translations

This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.