come to mind
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
Occur to someone as a thought or idea
Literally: arrive in one's mind
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
The images of the dead came to his mind and he knew that he had to stop Kopyion.
Yes, one picture does come to mind: before I broke away we lay facing, learning each other's features in this new light.
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 mind” mean?
Occur to someone as a thought or idea Literally: arrive in one's mind
Is “come to mind” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.