Come up with means to think of or suggest something: an idea, a plan, a solution or an answer. You use it when a person finds a new option themselves instead of taking a ready-made one. What they thought of comes straight after with: came up with a plan.
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come up with + idea/plan/solution/name; come up with a way to + verb
- Our team came up with a cheaper way to deliver orders to small towns.
- I need to come up with a topic for my essay by Monday.
- My brother always comes up with a good excuse for being late.
What changed
First versionAt the meeting, Anna invented an idea for the new logo.
RevisionAt the meeting, Anna came up with an idea for the new logo.
Invent can look like the right verb for thinking of an idea, but invent means to create a new device or technology. In English you don't invent an idea or a solution. So invented was replaced with came up with, and the rest of the sentence stayed as it was.
Without with, you get a different expression: come up means to appear or arise. A problem came up at work means a problem appeared at work; nobody thought of it. Come up with, on the other hand, is about a person who has thought of something.
Your turn
Nobody knew how to cut costs, but after lunch Maria ___ a clever plan.
Show the answer
came up with — Maria thought of the plan herself, and what she thought of comes straight after the gap: a clever plan. That needs came up with. Came up without with means appeared and can't be followed directly by the thing someone thought of, so came up a clever plan is not English.
Think of a problem at work or in your studies that you solved yourself. Name the problem and what you came up with.
Our team kept missing messages in long email chains, so I came up with a shared checklist that everyone updates daily.
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