Word.ws English Dictionary

runs up

runs up is the third-person singular simple present indicative 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 runs up

What is runs up the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Runs up is the third-person singular simple present indicative of run up.

Words near runs up in the dictionary

  1. runs to earth
  2. runs to ground
  3. runs to the ground
  4. runs to the hills
  5. runs to waste
  6. runs up
  7. runs up against
  8. runs up in
  9. runs up in it
  10. runs up on
  11. runs wild

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: runs 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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “runs up.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/runs_up. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.