Which one of the following phrasal verbs may be used in the blank space in the sentence, “No one knows how it all ____ (happened)”?

Correct — B, (b) came about.

The gloss is ‘(happened)’, and ‘come about’ is the phrasal verb that means to happen or to come to pass. What makes it certain here is the word ‘how’. English pairs ‘come about’ with ‘how’ so regularly that the two travel together: how did it come about? nobody could explain how the shortage came about. The phrase does not merely report that something occurred; it points at the manner or the chain of events by which it occurred, which is exactly what a sentence beginning ‘No one knows how it all…’ is asking after.

All four options are built on the same verb, ‘come’, so the verb decides nothing and the particle decides everything. That is the structure of this item and it is worth recognising, because it tells a candidate where to look. ‘Across’ gives chance discovery, ‘into’ gives acquisition and the entering of a state, ‘forward’ gives presenting oneself, and ‘about’ gives occurrence. Each is fixed by usage; none can be worked out from the particle’s literal sense.

The subject of the sentence supports the choice as well. ‘It all’ stands for a whole course of events, not for a person and not for a thing that could be found or received. Two of the other options need a person as subject or an object to govern, and neither is available here.

The same phrase is worth keeping for its other life: in sailing, a boat comes about when it turns through the wind, and the sense of turning to a new position is a useful picture of how a state of affairs comes to be what it is.

Why the others are wrong

• (a)came across — ‘Come across’ has two settled senses and both need something more than the sentence gives. In the first it means to meet or find by chance, and it must take an object: I came across an old file, she came across her old teacher at the station. In the second it means to give a particular impression, and it needs a complement introduced by ‘as’: he comes across as reliable. Here there is nothing after the blank at all, so neither sense can be completed, and neither means ‘happened’. The option is on the page because it is the most frequently used member of the family and will be the first that many candidates recognise.
• (c)came into — ‘Come into’ means to acquire, most often by inheritance — he came into a fortune, she came into some property — and it also forms a group of fixed official phrases in which something enters a state: come into force, come into effect, come into operation, come into being, come into existence. Every one of those requires the noun that names the state, and the sentence supplies none. ‘Come into being’ would have been close to the gloss if the noun were there, and its absence is precisely what rules the option out. The statutory members of this group are worth memorising for their own sake, since an Act comes into force on a notified date.
• (d)came forward — ‘Come forward’ means to present oneself, usually to offer help or information — witnesses came forward, no one came forward to claim the amount, several employees came forward to give evidence. Its subject must be a person capable of stepping up, and the subject here is ‘it all’, a course of events. The particle also connects this item to the error-spotting question earlier in Part A, where ‘forward’ was wrongly attached to ‘bring’; the paper is testing the same particle from both sides, once by asking a candidate to reject it and once by asking him not to choose it.

This item is a clean demonstration that in a phrasal verb the particle is the unit of meaning. The verb ‘come’ contributes almost nothing to any of the four combinations; each sense is supplied by the word after it, and the pairings are conventional rather than logical.

The ‘come’ family is large and repays learning whole. Come about — to happen. Come across — to meet or find by chance, or to give an impression. Come by — to obtain, especially with difficulty. Come into — to inherit, or to enter a state. Come out — to be published or become known. Come round — to be persuaded, or to regain consciousness. Come up — to arise for attention. Come up with — to produce an idea. Come through — to survive or to be received. Come off — to succeed, or to become detached. Come down on — to reprimand. Come in for — to receive, usually criticism.

Two tests separate them in an examination. The first is what each phrase requires after it: an object, a complement with ‘as’, a noun naming a state, or nothing at all. The second is what kind of subject it takes: a person, a thing, or an event. Apply those two tests to a blank and most of a set of four collapses without any need to recall a definition.

Key facts

• ‘Come about’ means to happen or come to pass, and it collocates strongly with ‘how’, which is the word that fixes the answer in this sentence.
• All four options share the verb ‘come’, so the particle carries the entire difference of meaning.
• ‘Come across’ requires an object in its ‘find by chance’ sense and a complement with ‘as’ in its ‘give an impression’ sense; the sentence offers neither.
• ‘Come into’ means to inherit, and it also forms the official phrases come into force, come into effect, come into operation and come into being, each of which needs its noun.
• ‘Come forward’ means to present oneself, usually to help or to give information, and requires a person as its subject.
• In sailing, a boat comes about when it turns through the wind — a separate current use of the same phrase.

Common traps

• Choosing ‘came across’ because it is the most familiar member of the family, without noticing that the sentence gives it nothing to take.
• Reading ‘came into’ as though ‘come into being’ were on the page; the phrase needs its noun and the noun is absent.
• Choosing ‘came forward’ for an event. The phrase requires a person who steps up, and ‘it all’ is a course of events.
• Solving this item without looking at Q15, where the same phrase is offered for a different gloss and the boundary between the two senses is drawn.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following phrasal verbs may be used in the blank space in the sentence, “The amendment ____ (began to operate) on the first day of April”?

  • (a)came about
  • (b)came into force
  • (c)came across
  • (d)came forward

  Answer(b) came into force — an enactment begins to operate on the date notified, and English says it comes into force or into effect. ‘Come about’ means to happen, ‘come across’ to find by chance, and ‘come forward’ to present oneself.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following phrasal verbs may be used in the blank space in the sentence, “While clearing the almirah he ____ (found by chance) a file of 1998”?

  • (a)came across
  • (b)came about
  • (c)came into
  • (d)came out

  Answer(a) came across — to come across something is to find it by chance, and the phrase takes a direct object, which the sentence supplies. ‘Come about’ means to happen, ‘come into’ means to inherit or to enter a state, and ‘come out’ means to be published or become known.