Oxford English Dictionary editors recently revealed that
“run” has indeed become the single word with the most potential meanings in all
of English, boasting no fewer than 645 different usage cases for the verb form
alone.
The definitions of “run” featured in the OED’s upcoming
third edition begin with the obvious, “to go with quick steps on alternate
feet,” then proceed to run on for 75 columns of type. This entry took one
professional lexicographer nine months of research to complete.
How could three little letters be responsible for so much
meaning?
Context is everything. Think about it: When you run a fever,
for example, those three letters have a very different meaning than when you
run a bath to treat it, or when your bathwater subsequently runs over and
drenches your cotton bath runner, forcing you to run out to the store and buy a
new one. There, you run up a bill of $85 because besides a rug and some cold
medicine, you also need some thread to fix the run in your stockings and some
tissue for your runny nose and a carton of milk because you’ve run through your
supply at home, and all this makes dread run through your soul because your
value-club membership runs out at the end of the month and you’ve already run
over your budget on last week’s grocery run when you ran over a nail in the
parking lot and now your car won’t even run properly because whatever idiot
runs that Walmart apparently lets his custodial staff run amok and you know
you’re letting your inner monologue run on and on but, God—you’d do things
differently if you ran the world. Maybe you should run for office.
It bears mentioning that “run” didn’t always have the run of
the dictionary. When the OED’s first edition came out in 1928 (after 70 years
of editorial research), the longest entry belonged to another three-letter
juggernaut: “set.” Even today, the print edition of the OED contains some 200
meanings, beginning with “put, lay, or stand (something) in a specified place
or position,” and continuing on for about 32 pages.
So what happened? Why is “run” suddenly the Swiss Army Knife
of verbs? ‘Run’ appears to have earned some major lift during the boom of the
Industrial Revolution, when all manner of mechanized innovation adopted it as
their verb of choice. “Machines run, clocks run, computers run—there are all of
those [meanings] which began in the middle of the 19th century,” British author
Simon Winchester says.
You can also watch the video by clicking on the Play Button
