Learn 10 phrasal verbs with "run"
Get this lesson’s key vocab, their translations and pronunciations. Sign up for your Free Lifetime Account Now and get 7 Days of Premium Access including this feature.
| Hi, everybody. Welcome back to Top Words. My name is Alisha, and today, we're going to talk about 10 phrasal verbs with "run." If you've watched our livestreams recently, you might have caught the episode where we talked about some of these phrasal verbs. You can watch that again for your homework, or for after work, or for a review as well. But let's go. We're going to do the Top Words episode about it now. |
| 1. "Run out of" |
| The first phrasal verb is "run out of." "Run out of something" means to sell out of something, to run out of a product, to run out of an item, to run out of a food in a restaurant, to run out of ideas, for example sentences for "run out of," okay. So, this is something--the nuance is sell out, to be finished, to have nothing left of something, to run out of, blah, blah, blah. So, in a sentence, "We ran out of products at the festival." Yes, please, be careful. The past tense of "run" is "ran." So, when you want to use past tense of this phrasal verb, we ran out, I ran out of, blah, blah, blah. Okay. |
| 2. "Run a business" |
| The next phrasal verb with run is "run a business." "Run a business" means like manage a business, often operate a business, own a business. You are the person in charge, or the person running the business is the person in charge, the person responsible for that business. So, in a sentence, "My dream is to run a haircutting business." |
| 3. "Run into" |
| The next phrasal verb is "run into." So, we can use "run into" to mean crash, like I ran into, again past tense, I ran into a wall on my way into the studio today, which is not true. I ran into something. Or we can use "run into" to mean encounter someone by surprise. So, for example, "I ran into my coworker at the beach yesterday," or, "I ran into my neighbor when I was shopping. I ran into my mom on the airplane," for example. Okay. So, these are all surprise encounters. When you encounter someone and you were not expecting to encounter them, you can use "run into," past tense, "ran into." In a sentence, "I ran into my friend at the mall." |
| 4. "Run by" |
| The next expression is "run by." So, "run by" means make a quick stop somewhere. "Run by the post office, run by the bank, run by a school, run by my house, run by your house after work, run by my favorite ice cream shop for a treat after work," for example. These are all quick stops somewhere, a very short stop for a short period of time. And then you're going to do something else. This is the nuance of "run by," a location. In a sentence, "I want to run by the post office before work." |
| 5. "Run away" |
| The next expression is "run way." "Run away" means escape or quickly leave somewhere. So, there's the nuance perhaps of something dangerous happening. You need to leave quickly. So, like run away from a bear, run away from a snake, run away from a strange person, run away from your fears. What? Okay. Run away from bad things. It's kind of running away from something negative. Or I think during the livestream, some people said like, "Run away from my girlfriend," or, "Run away from my wife's dog," or something like that. There's a nuance of escaping something here. In a sentence, "Run away from anyone suspicious." |
| 6. "Run around" |
| The next expression is "run around." "Run around" means to go to many places, usually in a short period of time. So, of course we can say like "run around" as in "I like to run around my neighborhood when I go jogging," literally running around an area. But if you're going to many places in a short period of time, like one afternoon, you have many places to go, or in one day, or maybe in one week, just a lot of meetings, for example, you can say, "I have to run around to a lot of places this afternoon," or, "I'm running around to a lot of different meetings this afternoon," for example. In a different sentence, "He's running around the city this afternoon. He has a lot of appointments." |
| 7. "Run off with" |
| The next expression is "run off with." "Run off with something" sounds like something was stolen, something was taken that was not supposed to be. So, it's not always stealing. Sometimes it's by accident, like in a situation like, "My roommate ran off with my phone this morning." So, maybe it was an accident, like maybe my phone was in my roommate's bag and my roommate left with my phone. So, "to run off with" means to leave, to go away holding something or with something that may or may not have been stolen. So, there's no intention of the owner. The owner maybe is missing that item. The owner wants that item but does not have it. So, in a sentence, "The thief ran off with my wallet." |
| 8. "Run up" |
| Next expression is "run up." "Run up" means to create a large total, or to make a list of items, usually on a bill. So, we use this a lot at restaurants or maybe in-service situations, maybe hotels, or maybe even the department store, for example. We usually use it in an expression like, "To run up a large bill at the bar," or, "To run up a large sales ticket," something like that. Usually, we use bill, "To run up a large bill." It means to make a long list, to run up, like imagine maybe a receipt if you can, "To run up a long list of items on a bill." In a sentence, "We ran up a huge bill at the bar last night." |
| 9. "Run a fever" |
| The next word is "run a fever." "Run a fever" means to have a high body temperature. This is a set phrase, "to run a fever," means, yeah, your body temperature is higher than normal. You have a fever. So, we can say, "I have a fever," or, "I'm too --" well, we don't say, "I'm too hot." That sounds strange. Say, "I have a fever," or, "I'm running a fever." Those two are the most common ways to talk about your body temperature. In a sentence, "I can't go to work. I'm running a fever." |
| 10. "Run on" |
| The next expression is "run on" plus something. So, oftentimes, this expression, "Run on a fuel of some kind," like some kind of energy giving substance. So, for people, like we were just discussing coffee, so some people say, "I run on coffee. My fuel is coffee." Or maybe, "I run on energy drinks." We can use this expression for cars, like, "My car runs on gasoline. My car runs on solar power." We use this to talk about how something gets its energy. So, I could say, "I run on coffee in the mornings." That's not true, but it's usually--it sounds like that thing is essential to making the energy happen. You must have that thing, or there only is, or only that thing is available. The nuance of like, "I run on coffee," it sounds like, "If I don't have that thing, I'll die." So, it sounds kind of serious, like this energy-giving thing is necessary for you or for your machine to run, to work, to function. So, in a sentence, "I didn't sleep at all last night. I'm running on coffee today." |
| That's the end. So, those are 10 phrasal verbs with "run." I hope that that was useful for you. If you like, if you want a little bit more practice or maybe to hear some slightly different explanations, be sure to check out the livestream that we did about this topic recently, too. Thanks for watching this episode at Top Words and I'll see you again soon. Bye! |
Comments
Hide