From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishcome about phrasal verb1 HAPPENto happen, especially in a way that is not planned The opportunity to get into computing came about quite by accident. How did this situation come about?2 TTWif a ship comes about, it changes direction → come→ See Verb table
Examples from the Corpus
come about• A number of educational reforms have come about as a result of the report.• His extra two years had come about because he'd shot a security guard in the leg with a twelve-bore.• That's how you came about, because she chased me.• The other crash came about because the plane ran out of gas.• Our problems came about because we ignored the advice of experts.• The dream of making this world into a global market can only come about by perpetuating injustice.• Quite how the bridge-building side of things came about is a mystery as is the fate of the firm.• There was, he added, a danger that exclusions might come about not deliberately but simply through inertia or administrative error.• How did it come about that she married an awful man like that?• In particular, how does it come about that the imprecise quantum world yields a precise answer when it is experimentally interrogated?• The decrease in the number of salmon has come about through commercial overfishing. 