run for the money
run for the money is the dated form of run for one's money.
Meaning of run for one's money
Noun
a run for one's money
- A difficult challenge for the person indicated, especially one involving a competitive situation.
- Since the beginning of the world all men have hunted me like a wolf—kings and sages, and poets and lawgivers, all the churches, and all the philosophies. But I have never been caught yet, and the skies will fall in the time I turn to bay. I have given them a good run for their money, and I will now.1908, G[ilbert] K[eith] Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare, Bristol: J[ames] W[illiams] Arrowsmith, […]; London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Company, →OCLC
- A reasonable opportunity to succeed, perform acceptably, or escape harm, especially in a difficult situation.
- He appealed and, by some arrangement or other, got leave to state his case personally to the Court of Revision. Said, I believe, that he did not much trust lawyers, but that if the sahibs would give him a hearing, as man to man, he might have a run for his money.1913, Rudyard Kipling, chapter 18, in Letters of Travel
Questions about run for the money
- What is run for the money the dated form of?
- Run for the money is the dated form of run for one's money.
Words near run for the money in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: run for the money (page history and authors); run for one's money (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 for the money.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/run_for_the_money. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.