Word.ws English Dictionary

runs for the roses

runs for the roses is the plural of run for the roses.

Meaning of run for the roses

Noun

run for the roses (plural runs for the roses)

  1. (usually capitalized and preceded by the) The Kentucky Derby horse race.
  2. (idiomatic) A college football game or series of games played with the ultimate goal of qualifying for the championship Rose Bowl game.
    • Looking back at Ohio State's run for the roses, there might be some who will insist the Buckeyes were lucky to escape defeat at least once. . . . the Buckeyes whipped a jinx in the form of premature Rose Bowl talk.1954, Lloyd Larson, "Ohio Comes Through Like Real Champ," Milwaukee Sentinel, 23 Nov., part 2, p. 2 (retrieved 24 Aug. 2009)
  3. (broadly, idiomatic) A hard-fought competition or demanding challenge of any kind.
    • The time had come, Dundee acknowledged, to decide if he was serious about making a run for the roses. It was only mid-1990, but presidential campaigns had evolved into two-year affairs, and if he really had that famous "fire in his belly," now was the time.1984, Lawrence Sanders, The Passion of Molly T., →ISBN, page 226

Questions about runs for the roses

What is runs for the roses the plural of?
Runs for the roses is the plural of run for the roses.

Words near runs for the roses in the dictionary

  1. runs for cover
  2. runs for it
  3. runs for one's life
  4. runs for the exercise
  5. runs for the hills
  6. runs for the roses
  7. runs from the tongue
  8. runs game
  9. runs game on
  10. runs hands
  11. runs high

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: runs for the roses (page history and authors); run for the roses (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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