comeuppance

The word 'comeuppance' is a 19th-century American English coinage, a vivid example of vernacular creativity. It is formed by combining the familiar phrasal verb "come up"—implying the arrival or occurrence of something—with the noun-forming suffix "-ance", which gives the sense of a resulting state or condition. The literal, almost folksy logic is of a deserved retribution finally "coming up" to meet someone. While its components have deep roots ("come" from Proto-Germanic and "-ance" ultimately from Latin), the specific blend is a native English construction, perfectly capturing the concept of poetic justice in a single, satisfying term.

This is a compound word formed within English from the phrasal verb "come up" and the suffix "-ance". The verb phrase "come up" carries the sense of "to appear, to arrive". The suffix "-ance" (from Latin '-antia', via Old French) forms nouns indicating an action, state, or quality.