come home

English

Etymology

The sport usage was popularised by the 1996 song "Three Lions", which contains the phrase "it's coming home", referring to the UEFA Euro 1996 championship hosted in England, the birthplace of association football.

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -əʊm

Verb

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

1. To return to one's house, or to any place of origin.
2. To touch a person's interests or feelings closely; to be fully understood or realised.

   Synonym: hit home

   It was only when I heard the police sirens that the seriousness of what I had done came home to me.

   It finally came home to me that I was wrong.

3. (nautical, of an anchor) To drag or slip through the ground.
4. (sports, of a sport) To achieve success (typically by winning an international competition) in the country in which the sport was invented.

Derived terms

• come home to roost