Verb
come down to us (third-person singular simple present comes down to us, present participle coming down to us, simple past came down to us, past participle come down to us)
(idiomatic) To survive to the present day; to be extant in some form.
Venerable men you have come down to us from a former generation. Heaven has bounteously lengthened out your lives, that you might behold this joyous day. Daniel Webster
I am convinced that everything has come down to us from the banks of the Ganges, astronomy, astrology, metempsychosis, etc. It does not behoove us, who were only savages and barbarians when these Indians and Chinese peoples were civilized and learned, to dispute their antiquity. Voltaire
Attention, attention, the key to practice, so many teachers have said. It's true. When we come to know, even a little, this truly miraculous and open nature of our being, we begin to appreciate the jewels and riches in these very simple instructions that come down to us through our teachers. Ken McLeod
Considering the wealth of poetic drama that has come down to us from the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, it is surprising that so little of any value has been added since. James Fenton
The central tenet of Christianity as it has come down to us is that we are to reach out when our instinct is to pull inward; to give when we want to take; to love when we are inclined to hate; to include when are tempted to exclude. Jon Meacham
ZOOLOGY, n. The science and history of the animal kingdom, including its king, the House Fly ('Musca maledicta'). The father of Zoology was Aristotle, as is universally conceded, but the name of its mother has not come down to us. Ambrose Bierce