Word.ws English Dictionary

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)

  1. (idiomatic) 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
  2. (idiomatic) 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

  1. ran over
  2. ran past
  3. ran point
  4. ran rampant
  5. ran rings around
  6. ran riot
  7. ran roughshod over
  8. ran scared
  9. ran short
  10. ran someone off their feet
  11. ran someone ragged

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.