The word “run” is particularly rich in the number of different (not to mention subtle and colourful) meanings it conveys.

Let’s start with the simplest senses of verb and noun: if you are in a hurry, you run. And if you are fitness-inclined, you go for a run.

But these basic meanings soon give way to more sophisticated nuance.

A Word Cloud for the text of the post Run That By Me Again

You can run a business. You can run a series of tests — or perform a series of tests; run and perform are equivalent here. But curiously, although you can perform a play, you do not run a play.

You can run the numbers. Or be given the run of the place.

A sense of illegality and danger soon creeps in with gin running and gun running.

Things start to get really interesting when run gets combined with other words to convey a particular meaning.

If tiredness overtakes you, you can be said to have run out of steam, and of course this sense had a literal as well as figurative meaning in the early industrial revolution. Both senses still exist in the phrase run out of gas. A particularly bad thing to do is run out of beer on a Friday night. (Don’t worry, if it is not too late, you can always go on a beer run.) Even worse, if you are skiing and caught in an avalanche, you’re likely to be found in its run out. In a similar but more useful way, a run out is a safety lane for runaway trucks on a steep slope.

So much for out. How about down? When my car is run down (perhaps after my running it into the ground), I replace it. But the pedestrian I run down might not be so easy to replace. You can run down a business as an alternative to selling it. And — in a completely different sense — I can give you the run down on my plans to run down my business.

You can run up a debt and run up a flag. You can run up against a problem.

You can run for President, but in the US this is an incredibly long processes if you include running for your party’s nomination, so you’d better be in it for the long run. And if Donald Trump wins, we’d better all run for our lives. Or he might cause a run on the bank.

Runs feature in games and sports. A run in poker isn’t much like a run in baseball (where the runner won’t score a run if he is run out first). And baseball runs have several types: a run, a home run and a grand slam home run. Horseracing provides the origin of the more general sense giving someone a good run for their money.

There are many cases where run conveys a sense of a series or line or persistence over time or space. You can have a run of bad luck. Your book can have a print run of 20,000. You can have a run in your nylons.

Then there are senses that imply freedom and its close cousin, anarchy. You can have the run of the place. Someone can give you the run-around. The kids can run riot.

Del Shannon had a bit of a thing for the word, which appears (according to my quick count) at least 23 times in the lyrics to his song “Runaway”.

But is this finally getting tiresome for you, dear reader, or even run of the mill? Perhaps you’re right to think that: I do have a tendency to run off at the mouth…..