come to life

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come to life (third-person singular simple present comes to life, present participle coming to life, simple past came to life, past participle come to life)

1. (intransitive, idiomatic) To become alive, to be given life; to be brought into existence.
   • 1999, Lee Smolin, New York Times, We All Came From Mars‎^[1]:

     We want to know exactly how the first cells came to life on earth.

   • 1995, Bill Watterson, The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book, Kansas City, MO: Andrews and McMeel, page 22:

     I don't think of Hobbes as a doll that miraculously comes to life when Calvin's around. Neither do I think of Hobbes as the product of Calvin's imagination... Hobbes is more about the subjective nature of reality than about dolls coming to life.

2. (intransitive, idiomatic) To appear as if alive.

   The CGI-generated characters came to life through an incredible display of a cutting-edge 3D technology.

3. (intransitive, idiomatic) To start to become energetic.
   • 2011 October 29, Neil Johnston, “Norwich 3 - 3 Blackburn”, in BBC Sport‎^[2]:

     It was only after Yakubu sliced another chance into the side netting, a bad miss by the former Everton striker, that Norwich came to life.

• toys-to-life