runaway

UK/ˈɹʌnəweɪ/US/ˈɹʌnəweɪ/

nounB1+Common in everyday speech and writing · #4,130 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: runaways

A runaway is somebody who has fled from home or from custody. A teenage runaway, pick up the runaway, runaways on the streets.

Most who leave home are gone for a night or two and return, and the ones who do not are the concern, since a young runaway with nowhere to go is at real risk. As an adjective it means out of control or overwhelming: a runaway train, a runaway success.

Definitions of runaway

1nounrunawaySomebody who has fled from home or from custody.B1+
“The police found the teenage runaway sleeping in a bus station two days later.”

runaway is a person.

Where it comes from

a deverbal from run away.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

runaway in the wild

Fugitive slaves or runaway slaves were historical terms used in the 18th and 19th centuries to describe individuals who fled the institution of slavery in the United States.
Fugitive slaves in the United States
A runaway is a minor or (depending upon the local jurisdiction) a person under a specified age who has left their parents or legal guardians without permission.
Runaway (dependent)
The name derives from its having been an escape route for runaway slaves.
Runaway Bay, Jamaica
Despite this, Super-Neptunes sit between this bimodal distribution of sub-Neptunes and gas giants, failing to either begin or fully complete runaway accretion.
Super-Neptune
Planet formation occurs over a period of ~106 years, with runaway accretion occurring only in the last 105 years.
Super-Neptune

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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