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There comes times in... OR There come times in...

Please help. I do not want to say "There comes a time..."

Brian Hitchcock
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cmjack
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1 Answers1

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Disregarding whatever the rest of your sentence may be, "There come times in..." is correct, while "There comes times in..." is never correct.

The subject of the sentence ("times") is plural, so the sentence must use a singular verb.

That's why the common phrase is "There comes a time". In that phrase, the subject "time" is singular, so the "conjugation for third-person singular (he, she, it)" [1] is required, which is "comes".

[1] From Brian Hitchcock's comment below on this.

Yee-Lum
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    It's probably worth mentioning explicitly that the word 'there' is not a noun and so it is not the subject of the sentence. The subject of the sentence is 'time[s]'. You can rearrange the sentence as, "Times come there..." – chasly - supports Monica Nov 03 '15 at 00:04
  • First comes helvetica in a large point size. Then there comes times in an even larger point size. – gnasher729 Nov 03 '15 at 02:37
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    "comes" is NOT a plural verb! It is the conjugation for third-person singular (he, she, it). – Brian Hitchcock Nov 03 '15 at 07:16
  • Yeah, the verb comes is decidedly singular, not plural. – Anonym Nov 03 '15 at 07:19
  • Thanks, I was not aware. Could @BrianHitchcock or Anonym shed some light on what the correct reasoning for this answer would be, then? I assume I'm "right" but got there with the wrong reasoning. – Yee-Lum Nov 03 '15 at 09:37
  • You're right, and used correct reasoning, but used the wrong term ("plural") to describe the verb. – Brian Hitchcock Nov 04 '15 at 13:13