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Glite Dictionary
🕵️ An indirect way 🏈 A wide run
end run

end run

1 7.6
A way of avoiding a rule or decision by acting cleverly
  • noun
  • /ˈɛnd rʌn/
  • US
translation icon : evasión
  • In an effort to get around the new laws, the company devised an end run that would allow them to continue operations.
  • make an end run

And it thinks that just by making this end run, it will be able to say, aha, I've got you now.

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Examples

  • And it thinks that just by making this end run, it will be able to say, aha, I've got you now.

    Gregory B. Sadler - That Philosophy Guy

  • Faced with opposition from the city council, she made an end run by gathering support from local businesses instead.

  • At the college, the number of times management has tried some sort of end run around faculty and staff during the summer months is legion.

    Blog text (9)

  • We take a kind of end run on the integral and I'm going to take a serious end run and write down the answer exactly.

  • We take a kind of end run on the integral and I'm going to take a serious end run and write down the answer exactly.

  • They are indeed using puppets like Holder and Obama to do end runs.

    Blog text (9)

  • If an end run of the Democrats was to get some of our supporters the money, we've got to do a comparable end run around them, which we will.

    Robinson Erhardt

  • And Khrushchev wanted to end run his own, you know, diplomats, diplomatic corps who were all, you know, spying on him.

  • You do realize he did an end-run for the Clintons to engineer a presidential pardon for Mark Rich on the FBI's 10 most wanted list for nothing more than cold hard cash.

    Blog text (9)

  • To avoid the lengthy approval process, they opted for an end run that bypassed the usual regulations.

Synonyms

evasion
vsend run
5 6.3

A quick movement that lets someone escape being caught

is focused on avoiding obstacles or opposition rather than physical escape
end run around
vsend run
  • US
1 7.7

An indirect way to avoid a rule or problem

is the shorter idiomatic term used for clever circumvention

Antonyms

to face
∞ 2.2

To deal with a difficult situation or person

to confront
359 4.4

Face a difficult problem or fear directly and bravely

How Indirect

end run
  • US
1 7.6
to circumvent
45 7.7
to bypass
119 4.7
to approach
159 2.6

Surface Forms

end run singular
end runs plural

Morphology

end + run

The phrase comes from American football where an 'end run' is a run around the end of the line to bypass defenders, so the sense of circumventing opposition is a metaphorical extension of 'end' (edge) + 'run' (move quickly). This relation gives some compositional clue (moving around an edge) but relies on cultural/sports knowledge and is not fully predictable for a B1 learner who only knows the constituent words, so it is partially transparent.

Etymology

The noun end run also became a saying from that football picture: by going around the end you avoid a strong defense instead of facing it head on, so people use end run for a clever move to 'get around' rules or opposition.