- noun semen. A later derivation from the verb to come.
- verb to experience an orgasm. A Victorian euphemism for a physiological fact that has no other name (apart from the also euphemistic ‘climax’) in standard English; this use of the word in fact dates back at least as far as Shakespeare and occurs subsequently in the (now archaic) form ‘come off’.
Origin & History of “come”
Come is of course one of the basic words of English, and its history goes back to the language’s Indo-European roots. here its distant ancestor was the base *gwem-, which also produced Greek baínein ‘go, walk’ (related to English base and basis) and Latin venīre ‘come’ (source of a whole range of English words from adventure to venue). The prehistoric Germanic descendant of *gwem- was *kweman or *kuman, which has produced German kommen, Dutch komen, Swedish komma, and English come. The compound become (source of comely) was formed in Germanic in prehistoric times.