come down the pike

come down the pike

English

Etymology

From pike, short for turnpike (“toll expressway”).

Verb

come down the pike (third-person singular simple present comes down the pike, present participle coming down the pike, simple past came down the pike, past participle come down the pike)

1. (chiefly US, of an event, thing, person) To emerge, come up; be about to happen; to approach or arrive on the scene; to present (itself or oneself).
   • 1902, Ralph Henry Barbour, chapter 11, in Behind the Line:

     "[T]hey're the finest football leaders that ever came down the pike."

   • 1949 November 14, “Art: Many Ways”, in Time‎, archived from the original on 2016-03-07:

     Alfred Stieglitz was the best photographer ever to come down the pike.

   • 2014 May 26, Amy Verner, “From Humble Sneaker to Luxury Icon”, in The New York Times‎, ISSN 0362-4331:

     “For me, it's a harbinger of larger cultural changes coming down the pike.”

   • 2023 February 23, Michael Levenson, quoting Sheree Thomas, “Science Fiction Magazines Battle a Flood of Chatbot-Generated Stories”, in The New York Times‎, ISSN 0362-4331:

     “I knew it was coming on down the pike, just not at the rate it hit us,” said Sheree Renée Thomas, the editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, which was founded in 1949.

Synonyms

• come down the line
• come down the road