make a run for it
verb1
Idiomatic To attempt to escape; to flee; to run away.
- An explosion! All’s over—I have nothing to do but to make a run for it.1824, George Soane, Pride Shall Have a Fall: A Comedy, London: Hurst, Robinson & Co., act 4, scene 2, page 79:
- [W]e got ourselves at once in marching order, and began to slip from rock to rock one after the other, now crawling flat on our bellies in the shade, now making a run for it, heart in mouth.1886 May 1 – July 31, Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Flight in the Heather: The Rocks”, in Kidnapped, being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour in the Year 1751: […], London; Paris: Cassell & Company, published 1886, →OCLC, page 198:
1 more example
- Nannie Slagg, terrified at this suggestion, raised her little bony hands to her mouth and raised her shoulders to her ears. Then she gave one frightened look down the passage and was about to make a run for it [...]1946, Mervyn Peake, “Prunesquallor’s Knee-Cap”, in Titus Groan, London: Eyre & Spottiswoode:
2
Idiomatic To run so as to avoid being late.
- [...] he began to go over in his mind the many occasions on which he had heard that toll coming faintly down the breeze, and had to pack his rod in a hurry and make a run for it, to get in before the gates were shut.1857, Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown’s School Days, Part 2, Chapter 6:
- 1964, John Nathan (translator), A Personal Matter by Kenzaburō Ōe, New York: Grove Press, 1969, Chapter 5, p. 83, In the depths of his body, Bird felt the beginning of an irrepressible and certain crisis. … Could he make it in time if he charged in that direction? But how much better to ride the crisis out without having to make a run for it.