Word.ws English Dictionary

made the running

made the running is the simple past and past participle of make the running.

Meaning of make the running

Verb

make the running (third-person singular simple present makes the running, present participle making the running, simple past and past participle made the running)

  1. (UK, idiomatic) To have a leading or influential position in a field or activity; to be more active than others.
    • He added: "In this period if you looked at the western world and asked who is making the running, from the point of view of modern society and particularly in terms of liberty, it would be Britain and we forget that. Britain is absolutely the model of the future."2014 April 7, Mark Brown, “Royal art show, The First Georgians, to open at Buckingham Palace”, in The Guardian
    Synonyms:
    set the pace

Questions about made the running

What is made the running the simple past and past participle of?
Made the running is the simple past and past participle of make the running.

Words near made the running in the dictionary

  1. made the headlines
  2. made the news
  3. made the passes
  4. made the perfect the enemy of the good
  5. made the rounds
  6. made the running
  7. made the weather
  8. made the welkin ring
  9. made the world go around
  10. made the wrong turn at Albuquerque
  11. made things interesting

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: made the running (page history and authors); make the running (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “made the running.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/made_the_running. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.