Word.ws English Dictionary

running up

running up is the present participle and gerund of run up.

Meaning of 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.
  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
  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.

See all 14 meanings of run up

Questions about running up

What is running up the present participle and gerund of?
Running up is the present participle and gerund of run up.

Words near running up in the dictionary

  1. running to waste
  2. running track
  3. running tracks
  4. running trap
  5. running traps
  6. running up
  7. running up against
  8. running up in
  9. running up in it
  10. running up on
  11. running up the score

Source and license

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