ran riot
ran riot is the simple past of run riot.
Meaning of run riot
Verb
run riot (third-person singular simple present runs riot, present participle running riot, simple past ran riot, past participle run riot)
- To act in an uncontrolled, unbridled manner.
- In their idea, there is scarcely a finer tree than the Kavika; and when in their fairy tales the imagination runs riot, and describes all that is lovely and beautiful, the Kavika is rarely omitted.1862, Berthold Seemann, Viti: an account of a government mission to the Vitian or Fijian Islands, in the years 1860-61, Cambridge: Macmillan & Co., →OCLC, page 318
- To be uncontrollable.
- And it was only the defiance of Cech that kept a rampant Spurs at bay in the second half, producing a collection of outstanding saves to somehow keep Arsenal in contention as Pochettino's side threatened to run riot.2018 February 10, Phil McNulty, “Tottenham Hotspur 1 - 0 Arsenal”, in BBC
Questions about ran riot
- What is ran riot the simple past of?
- Ran riot is the simple past of run riot.
Words near ran riot in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: ran riot (page history and authors); run riot (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:
Cite this entry: “ran riot.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ran_riot. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
