Word.ws English Dictionary

monkey run

monkey run noun: an evening walk undertaken by groups of young people, usually along established routes, to find a boyfriend or girlfriend.

Noun

monkey run (plural monkey runs)

  1. (UK, historical) An evening walk undertaken by groups of young people, usually along established routes, to find a boyfriend or girlfriend.
    • The railway underpass in the town centre has been called Tickle Cock by locals for at least a century and dates back to Victorian times. It is thought the name refers to a "monkey run" where the lads and lasses of Castleford did their courting ... He added: "It dates back to the late 19th Century...2006 March 11, “Residents cock-a-hoop after winning fight to keep saucy underpass name”, in The Yorkshire Post
    • In pre-war Britain, for example, younger people had mainly gained introductions to the opposite sex through the ‘evening walk’, with many British cities having well-known routes along which groups of young women and men would walk […]. Known colloquially as ‘monkeyruns’ or ‘monkeywalks’, these...[2013, Phil Hubbard, Cities and Sexualities, Routledge, →ISBN, page 137

Synonyms of monkey run

Forms of monkey run

pluralmonkey runs
alternative formmonkeyrun

Origin of monkey run

From monkey + run.

Questions about monkey run

What does monkey run mean?
Monkey run means an evening walk undertaken by groups of young people, usually along established routes, to find a boyfriend or girlfriend.
What part of speech is monkey run?
Monkey run is a noun.
What is the plural of monkey run?
The plural of monkey run is monkey runs.

Words near monkey run in the dictionary

  1. monkey puzzles
  2. monkey rail
  3. monkey rails
  4. monkey rum
  5. monkey rums
  6. monkey run
  7. monkey runs
  8. monkey see, monkey do
  9. monkey show
  10. monkey shows
  11. monkey slug

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: monkey run (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-monkey run.ogg.

Cite this entry: “monkey run.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/monkey_run. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.