run out

verb

ran out; run out; running out; runs out

intransitive verb

1

a

: to come to an end : expire

time ran out

b

: to become exhausted or used up

the gasoline ran out

2

: to jut out

transitive verb

1

a

: to finish out (a course, a series, a contest, etc.) : complete

b

of a baseball batter : to run hard to first base after hitting (a batted ball)

ran out the grounder

2

a

: to fill out (a typeset line) with quads, leaders, or ornaments

b

: to set (a line of text, such as the first line of a paragraph) with a hanging indention

3

: to exhaust (oneself) in running

4

: to cause to leave by force or coercion : expel

Phrases

run out of

: to use up the available supply of

ran out of time

run out on

: desert

Examples of run out in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Supplies collected from the 2017 eclipse didn't run out until last year, Fazekas said. —USA TODAY, 5 Apr. 2024

The current lease runs out at the end of this season, well before the A’s future home on the Las Vegas Strip will be completed. —Jason Anderson, Sacramento Bee, 4 Apr. 2024

Some ran out with computers, while others threw bags of clothes out of windows onto the street, which was also still littered with broken glass and cement fragments from the quake. —Siyi Zhao Lam Yik Fei, New York Times, 4 Apr. 2024

The owner of the complex, a Chinese conglomerate, ran out of funding before completing the residential and retail project. —Noah Goldberg, Los Angeles Times, 3 Apr. 2024

One in six Arkansas households stand to lose up to $30 a month as the federal Affordable Connectivity Program's funding runs out at the end of April. —Aaron Gettinger, arkansasonline.com, 2 Apr. 2024

Adding in a microcurrent facial device to your weekly regime could encourage you to stay in rather than running out and exhausting yourself as often. —Meghan Rose, Glamour, 1 Apr. 2024

During the intermission, before Stapleton came on—prime selling time—the commissary ran out of hot dogs and churros, and Duvalsaint had to settle for cotton candy, without much success. —Adam Elder, The New Yorker, 1 Apr. 2024

But in March, the program's funding also will run out, reducing even further the capacity of nonprofits to take in migrants at larger cities like Tucson or Phoenix. —The Arizona Republic, 26 Mar. 2024

Word History

First Known Use

14th century, in the meaning defined at intransitive sense 1a

Kids Definition

run out

verb

1

: to come to an end : expire

time ran out before we could tie the game

2

: to become exhausted or used up

our supplies were running out