run into

Verb

run into (third-person singular simple present runs into, present participle running into, simple past ran into, past participle run into)

1. (literally, intransitive but with prepositional object) To enter by running.
   • He ran into the building.
   • Here we were nearly 8 min. early, and was now a matter of spinning out time, as indeed we did—losing 3 min. from Penrith to Carlisle!—in order not to run into Carlisle more than 5 min. early.1957 August, Cecil J. Allen, “British Locomotive Practice and Performance”, in Railway Magazine, page 568
2. (intransitive but with prepositional object) To collide with.
   • He lost control of the vehicle and ran into a tree.
   • I've sustained some front-end damage after running into a pothole.
3. (transitive and with prepositional object) To cause to collide with.
   • He lost control of the vehicle and ran it into a tree.
4. (broadly, intransitive but with prepositional object) To unexpectedly encounter or meet someone or something (literally or figuratively).
   • I ran into your cousin the other day.
   • Everything was going according to plan until we ran into the legal problems.
5. (dated, intransitive but with prepositional object) To reach, to flow into (a body of water).
   • Œāso, on the coast, at the northern extremity of the Pyrenees, where the River Magrăda, now Urumea, runs into the sea.1849, Charles Anthon, A System of Ancient and Mediæval Geography, for the Use of Schools and Colleges, Harper & Brothers, Publishers (1871), page 58
6. (intransitive but with prepositional object) To blend into; to be followed by or adjacent to without there being a clear boundary.
   • Of course, a show might start at a certain time, and one must place bets at the sports book at the right time, but for the most part, day runs into night and night runs into day without notice or comment.2003, Julie M. Crandall and Mary Helen Brown, "The Millennium Waltz: A Story in Three-Quarter Time", Chapter 18 in Robin Patric Clair (ed.), Expressions of Ethnography: Novel Approaches to...
7. (transitive and with prepositional object) To cause to blend into.
   • You can use the paintbrush this way to run the colors into each other.
8. To reach a large figure.
   • By the end, the cost of the project ran into the millions of dollars.
9. (transitive) To amount to.
   • debts running into millions