RUN AMOK Definition & Meaning

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run amok

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Idioms and Phrases

Also, run riot or wild . Behave in a frenzied, out-of-control, or unrestrained manner. For example, I was afraid that if I left the toddler alone she would run amok and have a hard time calming down , or The weeds are running riot in the lawn , or The children were running wild in the playground. Amok comes from a Malay word for “frenzied” and was adopted into English, and at first spelled amuck , in the second half of the 1600s. Run riot dates from the early 1500s and derives from an earlier sense, that is, a hound's following an animal scent. Run wild alludes to an animal reverting to its natural, uncultivated state; its figurative use dates from the late 1700s.

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Example Sentences

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Republicans who have seized on the issue portray it as a deeply unfair example of “woke” politics run amok.

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If there's almost no recourse at the federal level to curb an FBI run amok, state and local authorities could defy federal authorities by refusing to cooperate in joint task forces, such as those that might be re-directed to round up immigrants and deport them.

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On Bourbon Street, consumerism and short-term gratification run amok: barkers hawk neon drinks, discarded plastic crunches underfoot, pounding drumbeats and flashing lights override rational thought.

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Kavanaugh denied the allegations and, thanks to Trump and the Senate’s Republican majority, he was lionized on the right as a victim of a movement run amok.

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But conservatives, in reaction, spent so much of the 1990s and early 2000s dining out on their exposes of liberal hypocrisies and political correctness run amok that they forgot how to cook anything better for themselves or the rest of us.

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

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