run with
verb1
Literally To be streaming with a fluid.
- After a long run, his face was running with sweat.
- The streets were running with rain water.
- 3M's culture and its organizational structure are all directed to encouraging its people to take an idea and run with it.2006, David I. Cleland, Lewis R. Ireland, Project management: strategic design and implementation, page 83:
3
Idiomatic, Informal To take an incomplete or inadequate (plan, text, etc.) and develop it further, often with the implication of carelessness.
- They took this three-second sound bite and ran with it to try to smear me.
4
US, Idiomatic, Informal To be a member of (a gang, hooligan firm, etc.); to associate with a, typically disreputable, individual or group.
- The Bat—they called him the Bat.[…]. He'd never been in stir, the bulls had never mugged him, he didn't run with a mob, he played a lone hand, and fenced his stuff so that even the fence couldn't swear he knew his face.1920, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Avery Hopwood, chapter I, in The Bat: A Novel from the Play (Dell Book; 241), New York, N.Y.: Dell Publishing Company, →OCLC, page 01:
- For about three years, I ran with several different gangs.2011, Carl L. Adams, Wanted: Lost Souls, page 59:
1 more example
- Some of these wannabe hooligans ran with the Celtic Soccer Crew for a number of years without ever being arrested or suffering as much as a broken nail.2012, John O'Kane, Celtic Soccer Crew:
5
Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see run, with.
- The thief was running with the purse in his hands.