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Glite Dictionary
🚗 To hit with vehicle 💧 To overflow
to run over

to run over

93 3.3
A vehicle drives over a person or animal causing injury
  • phrasal verb
  • /rʌn ˈoʊvər/
translation icon : atropellar
  • I got run over by a guy from the US ski team.

I hope you hope you get run over by a church van.

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Examples

  • The driver was shocked when he accidentally ran over a cyclist at the intersection.

  • "I was almost run over by a train, but this guy caught me before I fell."

    Fiction book (2001)

  • So it's a classic case that oh, you know I, I ran over this guy by accident.

  • This is a car that will run over your family if it's going too fast.

  • And you tried to run me over with your little car.

    A Good Year (2006)

  • A pizza delivery guy almost ran over them before they reached the bottom of the stairs.

    Fiction book (2000)

  • Bobby jumped out of the way, and the car ran over the snake.

    Fiction book (1995)

  • A neighbor, parking his pickup truck, ran over him with both right wheels.

    Fiction book (1991)

  • They think he was run over intentionally.

    Crash (1996)

  • Maybe people in Steuben haven't noticed yet that cars sometimes run over children in the road.

    Fiction book (1992)

Synonyms

to run down
vsto run over
6 5.5

To hit and pass over a person or animal with a vehicle

emphasizes the resulting injury, death, or damage rather than the hitting action

Antonyms

to avoid
∞ 1.0

To stay away from something or not do it to stop something bad from happening

stop
310 1.0

An act when something ends or pauses

How Violent

to mow down
  • Offensive
9 8.8
to run over
93 3.3
to hit
∞ 1.0
to bump
111 1.0
to brush
133 1.6

Surface Forms

run over infinitive
ran over past
run over past participle
running over present participle
runs over third person singular

Morphology

run + over

The meaning 'to drive a vehicle over someone or something' is directly derivable from combining a motion verb ('run' — move) with a directional particle ('over' — across/above), yielding a literal motion across or on top of an object. This verb+particle composition is a common, transparent pattern across languages, so a B1 learner who knows the constituents will most likely infer the vehicular 'run over' sense.

Etymology

The phrase run over comes from the image of a car or wheel that runs along and goes over a person or thing it hits. So it means 'to drive a vehicle over someone or something', often causing injury or damage.