Word.ws English Dictionary

ran afoul of

ran afoul of is the simple past of run afoul of.

Meaning of run afoul of

Verb

run afoul of (third-person singular simple present runs afoul of, present participle running afoul of, simple past ran afoul of, past participle run afoul of)

  1. To become entangled in; to run aground on.
  2. (idiomatic) To contravene.
    • When quoting others, take care not to run afoul of copyright rules.

Questions about ran afoul of

What is ran afoul of the simple past of?
Ran afoul of is the simple past of run afoul of.

Words near ran afoul of in the dictionary

  1. ran a train
  2. ran about
  3. ran about with
  4. ran across
  5. ran adrift
  6. ran afoul of
  7. ran after
  8. ran against
  9. ran aground
  10. ran ahead
  11. ran along

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ran afoul of (page history and authors); run afoul of (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: “ran afoul of.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ran_afoul_of. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.