make a run for it

present singular third person makes a run for it · participle present making a run for it · participle past made a run for it · past made a run for it

1. idiomaticTo attempt to escape; to flee; to run away.

   An explosion! All’s over—I have nothing to do but to make a run for it.

   1824, George Soane, Pride Shall Have a Fall: A Comedy, London: Hurst, Robinson & Co., act 4, scene 2, page 79

   2 more examples

   [W]e got ourselves at once in marching order, and began to slip from rock to rock one after the other, now crawling flat on our bellies in the shade, now making a run for it, heart in mouth.

   1886 May 1 – July 31, Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Flight in the Heather: The Rocks”, in Kidnapped, being Memoirs of the Adventures of David Balfour in the Year 1751: […], London; Paris: Cassell & Company, published 1886, →OCLC, page 198

   Nannie Slagg, terrified at this suggestion, raised her little bony hands to her mouth and raised her shoulders to her ears. Then she gave one frightened look down the passage and was about to make a run for it [...]

   1946, Mervyn Peake, “Prunesquallor’s Knee-Cap”, in Titus Groan, London: Eyre & Spottiswoode

   Synonyms: have a run for it, make a break for it, make a dash for it

2. idiomaticTo run so as to avoid being late.

   [...] he began to go over in his mind the many occasions on which he had heard that toll coming faintly down the breeze, and had to pack his rod in a hurry and make a run for it, to get in before the gates were shut.

   1857, Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown’s School Days, Part 2, Chapter 6

   1 more example

   1964, John Nathan (translator), A Personal Matter by Kenzaburō Ōe, New York: Grove Press, 1969, Chapter 5, p. 83, In the depths of his body, Bird felt the beginning of an irrepressible and certain crisis. … Could he make it in time if he charged in that direction? But how much better to ride the crisis out without having to make a run for it.