run amok

1. Also,. 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.

Example Sentences

Born Ella Yelich-O’Connor, Lorde broke out at age 16 with “Royals,” her stark and whispery debut single — “a speech barely scaffolded with melody,” she calls it now — about the illusory satisfactions of a consumer culture run amok.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

Their defending has been such an abomination that Celtic, with no dependable striker but with a point to prove, could potentially run amok.

Read more on BBC

This, I realized while standing there, was public policy in action, MAGA’s culture of cruelty and gangster capitalism run amok on the street level.

Read more on Salon

This, I realized while standing there, was public policy in action, MAGA’s culture of cruelty and gangster capitalism run amok on the street level.

Read more on Salon

That and Curry exiting the stage when the Lions were threatening to run amok and trouble the record books.

Read more on BBC

Related Words

• defy 
• overthrow 
• renounce 
• resist 
• revolt 
• secede 
• take up arms