to run down
13
4.1
- phrasal verb
- /rʌn daʊn/
:
perseguir
- She's running down the beach!
Examples
-
During the marathon, she hoped to run down the leading competitor before the finish line.
-
I'll run down that mob and fetch her back.
-
Jason left the church and ran down the street to Bill.
Academic text (2008) -
Hey, Paul, would you run down and get a bottle of scotch?
-
She ran down to the store.
-
She ran down to the market.
-
But Yiftach said again: "There's a light on in my house," and began running down the street to his house.
Fiction book (1996) -
Zeno and his guests, terrified, ran down to the street shouting about an earthquake, and Anthemius had his revenge.
-
You'd better run down there and apologize, or she won't play gin rummy with you anymore.
-
The police had to run down the suspect after he tried to escape.
Synonyms
855
1.0
To run after someone or something to catch them
322
1.0
To chase someone or something without stopping to catch them
11
4.1
Start running after someone or something to catch them
9
4.6
To follow wild animals until you catch or kill them
4
1.9
To run after someone or something to catch them
Following someone to try to catch them
Antonyms
How Persistent
Surface Forms
Morphology
The idea of causing something to be brought down by movement is derivable from 'run' (movement) + 'down' (to bring down), so learners could partly infer a physical knocking-down sense. However, the specific sense involving striking and passing over with a vehicle (akin to 'run over') is a more specific usage that is not fully predictable from the parts and may require prior exposure, so it is only partially transparent.
Etymology
Run down may come from the simple image of someone chasing another person or animal until they are too tired to move, so the chaser literally runs the other one down. So it means 'to pursue until caught or stopped'.