Word.ws English Dictionary

making the running

making the running is the present participle and gerund 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 making the running

What is making the running the present participle and gerund of?
Making the running is the present participle and gerund of make the running.

Words near making the running in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: making 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: “making the running.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/making_the_running. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.