Word.ws English Dictionary

run of play

run of play noun: a passage of play; a series of consecutive moments, considered as a whole.

Noun

run of play (plural runs of play)

  1. (idiomatic) A passage of play; a series of consecutive moments, considered as a whole.
    • Except for the ending. Going down by nine points when we seemed to have the run of play was shattering.2005, Sean Dooley, The Big Twitch, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, page 225
    • Was it a dominating performance? No. Were you expecting dominance? Fact is, Sounders FC created more than twice the chances of the home team. While the finishing was sub-par, the run of play was controlled by the guys in green until the unfortunate mistakes.2010 April 25, Joshua Mayers, “Sounders FC 0, Toronto FC 2 -- postgame thoughts and player ratings”, in Seattle Times

Forms of run of play

pluralruns of play

Questions about run of play

What does run of play mean?
Run of play means a passage of play; a series of consecutive moments, considered as a whole.
What part of speech is run of play?
Run of play is a noun.
What is the plural of run of play?
The plural of run of play is runs of play.

Words near run of play in the dictionary

  1. run nowhere
  2. run o' the mill
  3. run of house
  4. run of month
  5. run of paper
  6. run of play
  7. run of press
  8. run of station
  9. run of the ball
  10. run of the balls
  11. run of the mill

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: run of play (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-run of play.ogg.

Cite this entry: “run of play.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/run_of_play. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.