come to grief
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
to fail or come to a bad end
Literally: meet with misfortune
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
ONE of Britain's biggest service companies has come to grief with disastrous figures and a crash in its shares.
Mr Major could come to more grief this weekend.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “come to grief” mean?
to fail or come to a bad end Literally: meet with misfortune
Is “come to grief” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.