run

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Related to runs: diarrhea, runs out, fun runs

run

1. verb, informal To leave or depart, especially very quickly or suddenly. Sorry, I've got to run. I'll call you tomorrow to go over the project in greater detail. A: "Do you want another drink?" B: "No, I'd better run. I have an early start tomorrow."
2. noun, slang A period of frequent and extended use of a particular drug; a drug binge. Usually used in combinations. It turns out he had been on a cocaine run for nearly three months straight, and he had spent almost all of their savings during that time. I nearly died on that last heroin run. This time, I'm doing whatever it takes to get clean.

run its course

To progress along something's natural course and conclude at its normal pace. (Used especially in reference to illness and disease.) Unfortunately, there's no treatment for this kind of infection. You just have to let it run its course. Don't stress about Susan's new boyfriend. I'm sure it's just a summer thing—it will run its course before she goes back to school. The president said he would rather let the economy run its course than try to manipulate it with a stimulus package.
See also: course, run

the runs

slang A case of diarrhea. I get the runs when I drink too much coffee, so I tend to avoid it altogether. Something I ate has been giving me the runs all day.
See also: run
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms. © 2024 Farlex, Inc, all rights reserved.

run

1. n. a session or period of time spent doing something; a period of time when something happens. The market had a good run today.
2. tv. to transport contraband, alcohol, or drugs. Harry the Horse used to run booze during prohibition.
3. n. an act of transporting contraband. Four soldiers were killed during a run.
McGraw-Hill's Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions Copyright © 2006 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

run

/take its course
To follow its natural progression or development: Should we let the illness run its course?
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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References in classic literature ?
At the meet they found some forty or fifty boys, and Tom felt sure, from having seen many of them run at football, that he and East were more likely to get in than they.
We run into the Cock, and every one who comes in within a quarter of an hour of the hares'll be counted, if he has been round Barby church." Then came a minute's pause or so, and then the watches are pocketed, and the pack is led through the gateway into the field which the hares had first crossed.
The scent, though still good, is not so thick; there is no need of that, for in this part of the run every one knows the line which must be taken, and so there are no casts to be made, but good downright running and fencing to be done.
For if you would consider for a moment, you small boys, you would remember that the Cock, where the run ends and the good ale will be going, lies far out to the right on the Dunchurch road, so that every cast you take to the left is so much extra work.
But they have too little run left in themselves to pull up for their own brothers.
Young Brooke thinks so too, and says kindly, "You'll cross a lane after next field; keep down it, and you'll hit the Dunchurch road below the Cock," and then steams away for the run in, in which he's sure to be first, as if he were just starting.
Here we are, dead beat, and yet I know we're close to the run in, if we knew the country."
"I'll carry Button-Bright," he said, for he knew the little boy's legs were too short to run fast.
One of the queer missiles struck the shaggy man on his back and nearly knocked him over; but he was at the mouth of the cave now, so he set down Button-Bright and told the boy to run across the bridge to Dorothy.
There was a little one-horse town about three mile down the bend, and after dinner the duke said he had ciphered out his idea about how to run in daylight without it being dangersome for Jim; so he allowed he would go down to the town and fix that thing.
The price of the paper was two dollars a year, but he took in three subscriptions for half a dollar apiece on con- dition of them paying him in advance; they were going to pay in cordwood and onions as usual, but he said he had just bought the concern and knocked down the price as low as he could afford it, and was going to run it for cash.
His mind went back to the night when he had been frightened by thoughts of a giant that might come to rob and plun- der him of his possessions, and again as on that night when he had run through the fields crying for a son, he became excited to the edge of insanity.
She came flying out of the wood over yonder--How fast those Queens CAN run!'
'But aren't you going to run and help her?' Alice asked, very much surprised at his taking it so quietly.
'You shouldn't have run him through with your horn, you know.'