run with
English
[edit]Pronunciation
[edit]Audio (General Australian): (file)
Verb
[edit]run with (third-person singular simple present runs with, present participle running with, simple past ran with, past participle run with)
- (literally) To be streaming with a fluid.
- After a long run, his face was running with sweat.
- The streets were running with rain water.
- (informal, idiomatic) To follow something through to completion or realization.
- 2006, David I. Cleland, Lewis R. Ireland, Project management: strategic design and implementation, page 83:
- 3M's culture and its organizational structure are all directed to encouraging its people to take an idea and run with it.
- (informal, idiomatic) To take an incomplete or inadequate (plan, text, etc.) and develop it further, often with the implication of carelessness.
- They took this three-second sound bite and ran with it to try to smear me.
- (US, informal, idiomatic) To be a member of (a gang, hooligan firm, etc.); to associate with a, typically disreputable, individual or group.
- 1920, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Avery Hopwood, chapter I, in The Bat: A Novel from the Play (Dell Book; 241), New York, N.Y.: Dell Publishing Company, →OCLC, page 01:
- The Bat—they called him the Bat. […]. He'd never been in stir, the bulls had never mugged him, he didn't run with a mob, he played a lone hand, and fenced his stuff so that even the fence couldn't swear he knew his face.
- 2011, Carl L. Adams, Wanted: Lost Souls, page 59:
- For about three years, I ran with several different gangs.
- 2012, John O'Kane, Celtic Soccer Crew:
- Some of these wannabe hooligans ran with the Celtic Soccer Crew for a number of years without ever being arrested or suffering as much as a broken nail.
- Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see run, with.
- The thief was running with the purse in his hands.