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View synonyms for runaround

runaround

[ ruhn-uh-round ]

noun

  1. indecisive or evasive treatment, especially in response to a request:

    Ask for a raise and he'll give you the runaround.

    Synonyms: slip, evasion, dodge

  2. Printing. an arrangement of type in which several lines are set in narrower measure than the others in a column to accommodate an illustration, initial, or the like.


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Word History and Origins

Origin of runaround1

1870–75, Americanism; noun use of verb phrase run around
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Idioms and Phrases

see get the runaround .
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Example Sentences

They’d spoken personally before, and she was tired of getting the runaround.

They called it the National Runaround Act and mocked the eagle as the Soviet Duck.

The runaround concluded with King and Brando exchanging lip kisses.

Pembroke watched him hurry off to service a car with a sense of having been given the runaround.

His reply to that, according to your exhibits, was that they would simply give him the same runaround again.

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

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

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run a riskrun around in circles