run up

Verb

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

1. To run (towards someone or something); to hasten to a destination.
   • As I was walking along the road, a man suddenly ran up to me.
   • The dog ran up under the table to get his food.
2. To approach (an event or point in time).
   • We are putting on lots of special attractions as we run up to Christmas.
3. (transitive) To take to a destination or before an authority.
   • […] and I took him along and ran him up to police headquarters.1924, Michigan. Supreme Court, Michigan Reports, volume 226, page 46
4. (dated) To erect hastily, as a building.
   • we wait until the palace is half-way up, and then we pay some tasty architect to run us up an ornamental mud hovel, right against it1840 February, Edgar Allan Poe, “Peter Pendulum, the Business Man”, in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, volume 6, number 2, page 87

   Synonyms:

   throw up, knock up, knock together, slap together

5. (idiomatic, transitive) To make something, usually an item of clothing, very quickly.
   • I'll run you up a skirt for tomorrow evening.
6. (idiomatic, transitive) To bring (a flag) to the top of its flag pole.
   • Stand quietly while the honor guard runs the flag up.
7. (transitive) To string up; to hang.
8. Of a bowler, to run, or walk up to the bowling crease in order to bowl a ball.
   • He runs up... and bowls. Smashed away for four runs!
9. (intransitive, transitive) To rise; to swell; to grow; to increase.
   • Accounts of goods credited run up very fast.
   • But these, having been untrimmed for many years, had run up into great bushes, or rather dwarf trees.1821 January 8, [Walter Scott], Kenilworth; a Romance. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: […] Archibald Constable and Co.; and John Ballantyne, […]; London: Hurst, Robinson...
10. (idiomatic) To accumulate (a debt).
    • He ran up over $5,000 in unpaid bills.
11. To thrust up, as anything long and slender.
    • The fence runs up along the edge of the pasture.
12. (transitive) To warm up and test an airplane before a flight.
13. (reflexive, slang, sometimes, African-American Vernacular) To accumulate money, drugs, etc.
    • I run me up some big bills.
14. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see run, up.
    • The small boy ran up the hill.