Word.ws English Dictionary

run-ins

run-ins is the plural of run-in.

Meaning of run-in

Noun

run-in (plural run-ins)

  1. An encounter; a scrape or brush, especially one involving trouble or difficulty.
    • During that time he had two more run-ins with the law. One involved the sale of stolen property. The other was for a series of hot checks.2004, Pamela Morsi, Suburban Renewal, page 95
  2. The end-phase of a competition etc.
    • Yahoo Sport's Leicester City blogger Helen Nutter gets ready for the Premier League run-in knowing her side - incredibly - still have a great chance of being crowned champions
  3. A sudden compression between two coupled railcars when the hinder one is moving faster than the fore one.
    • Brake pipe pressure reduction rates of over 30 psi/sec lasting for about 15 milliseconds were created by harsh slack run-ins.1990, F. G. Carlson, Undesired Emergency Brake Applications, Association of American Railroad Research and Test Department

See all 5 meanings of run-in

Questions about run-ins

What is run-ins the plural of?
Run-ins is the plural of run-in.

Words near run-ins in the dictionary

  1. run-down
  2. run-downs
  3. run-flat
  4. run-flats
  5. run-in
  6. run-ins
  7. run-length encoding
  8. run-length encodings
  9. run-o'-the-mill
  10. Run-O-Waters
  11. run-of-the-mill

Source and license

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