kommt

kommt is the third-person singular present tense form of the German verb kommen, meaning to come or to arrive. It is a core verb in German, used to describe movement toward a speaker or a location, but it also appears in many idioms and fixed expressions, as well as in compound verbs with prefixes.

Origin and cognates: The verb kommen comes from Old High German kumen/kummen and ultimately from Proto-Germanic roots. It has cognates in other Germanic languages, such as Dutch komen and English come, reflecting a shared linguistic heritage.

Usage and examples: In the present tense, er kommt means “he comes” or “he is coming.” Similarly, sie kommt and es kommt are used for “she comes” and “it comes.” Examples: Er kommt heute. Was kommt als Nächstes? The verb often denotes physical arrival but also appears in figurative senses, such as events approaching or developments occurring.

Grammatical notes: In the perfect tense, kommen uses the auxiliary sein, as in er ist gekommen (“he has come”). Kommen is intransitive, typically not taking a direct object. It frequently appears with separable-prefix verbs to form verbs with related meanings, such as ankommen (to arrive) or auftauchen (to appear, with a different prefix but related sense).

Common phrases and forms: Es kommt darauf an is a frequent idiom meaning “it depends.” Wie kommt es? or Wie kommt’s? mean “How does it come about?/What’s going on?” The imperative forms are Komm! (singular informal), Kommt! (plural informal), and Kommen Sie! (formal). These uses illustrate how kommt operates within basic and extended German sentence structure.