Meanings
- idiomaticNo longer in a competition; eliminated from consideration.
When it was revealed he had shielded a friend from prosecution when he was the district attorney, he was out of the running for a judicial appointment.
1 more example
8 Jan 2020, Felicity Cloake in The Guardian, How to make the perfect gluten-free chocolate brownies – recipe What that flour is hardly seems to matter too much, either – indeed, one of the finest examples I’ve ever eaten was shared, rather grudgingly, it must be admitted, with a coeliac friend. But, with my usual plain white out of the running here, what’s the best substitute for a deliciously squidgy, delightfully rich result?
Cite this entry
out of the running. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/out%20of%20the%20running
“out of the running.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/out%20of%20the%20running. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “out of the running,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/out%20of%20the%20running.
Source: out of the running on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.