Three little letters, 645 meanings. Any guesses?
You might think it’s absurd (and maybe it is), but Oxford English Dictionary editors recently revealed that “run” has become the word with the most potential meanings in all of English, boasting no fewer than 645 different usage cases for the verb form alone.
The copious 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 over a great many pages.
No wonder that this singe entry took one professional lexicographer nine months of research to complete. But 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 sizeable bill 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 store apparently lets his staff run amok and you know you’re letting your inner monologue run on and on but, gosh - you’d do things differently if you ran the world. Maybe you should run for office.
Pause. Breathe. There are still several hundred more meanings to go. But OGN will spare you having to run through all of those. You will just have to wait until the next edition of the OED comes out.
It's remarkable that a simple looking three letter word has become the most complicated, multifaceted word in the English language.