make a run for it

Verb

make a run for it (third-person singular simple present makes a run for it, present participle making a run for it, simple past and past participle made a run for it)

1. (idiomatic) To attempt to escape; to flee; to run away.
   • An explosion! All’s over—I have nothing to do but to make a run for it.1824, George Soane, Pride Shall Have a Fall: A Comedy, London: Hurst, Robinson & Co., act 4, scene 2, page 79
   • [W]e got ourselves at once in marching order, and began to slip from rock to rock one after the other, now crawling flat on our bellies in the shade, now making a run for it, heart in mouth.1886 May 1 – July 31, Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Flight in the Heather: The Rocks”, in Kidnapped, being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour in the Year 1751: […], London; Paris: Cassell &...

   Synonyms:

   have a run for it, make a break for it, make a dash for it

2. (idiomatic) To run so as to avoid being late.
   • [...] he began to go over in his mind the many occasions on which he had heard that toll coming faintly down the breeze, and had to pack his rod in a hurry and make a run for it, to get in before the gates were shut.1857, Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown’s School Days, Part 2, Chapter 6
   • In the depths of his body, Bird felt the beginning of an irrepressible and certain crisis. … Could he make it in time if he charged in that direction? But how much better to ride the crisis out without having to make a run for it.1964, John Nathan (translator), A Personal Matter by Kenzaburō Ōe, New York: Grove Press, 1969, Chapter 5, p. 83