run-down
run-down adjective: tired and exhausted. Also the alternative form of rundown.
Adjective
run-down (comparative more run-down, superlative most run-down)
- Tired and exhausted.
- Synonyms:
- out of gas, weary, bleareyed, bleary, bleary-eyed, bone-tired, bushed, tired out, spent, wrecked
- Decrepit.
- The task was made trebly difficult, however, by the badly run-down condition in which the railways of Britain had been unavoidably left at the end of the war in 1945, […].1958 January, 'Borderer', “Ten Years of British Railways”, in Railway Magazine, page 12
- In the Seventies the system was run-down and demoralised. Road transport was the future, the Underground was being 'managed for decline', and the system was filthier than the streets above.2012, Andrew Martin, Underground Overground: A passenger's history of the Tube, Profile Books, →ISBN, page xiii, Preface
- Synonyms:
- dilapidated, worse for wear, shabby, tacky, scroungy, mean, beat, beat up, beaten up, bedraggled
- Having the spring unwound.
Also used as
run-down is also the alternative form of rundown.
Synonyms of run-down
Forms of run-down
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| comparative | more run-down |
| superlative | most run-down |
| Noun | |
| plural | run-downs |
Origin of run-down
Deverbal from run down.
Questions about run-down
- What does run-down mean?
- Run-down means tired and exhausted.
- What part of speech is run-down?
- Run-down is an adjective.
Words near run-down in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: run-down (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: “run-down.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/run-down. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.