The many meanings of "run"

Matt, you really smart guy: I’m curious about the term “hit and run,” as in a car accident where someone leaves the crime scene. Is this an old term? Cars don’t exactly “run,” do they? My theory is that it is called “hit and run” because horse-drawn carriages would hit someone and then run away, perhaps on purpose or maybe the driver couldn’t control the horses. What do you think? — Steve, Cardiff-by-the-Sea

Steve, you really — unusual guy. Of course cars run. They run good. Don’t you read the classifieds? When we thumb through the half-dozen pages in the Oxford English Dictionary devoted to every nuance of the word “run,” we find that things have run good for at least 1000 years. (The OED cites a reference from the 11th Century to boats “running.”)

When we haul out the volume that includes “hit” and search for “hit and run,” we find the original reference, from 1899, to be the baseball strategy. A base runner leaves as the pitcher winds up, and the batter is obliged to make contact to help the runner advance safely or gain two bases on a single. (Yes, it really should be called “run and hit,” but it’s not. No, I don’t know why.) Colorful sports writing of the early 1900s influenced the general American vocabulary. So by the early 1920s, sez the OED, “hit and run” described a motoring strategy. In this case, the hitter attempts to advance safely to home, leaving the hitee to file with his own insurance company and have his rates raised. During World War II, “hit and run” escalated into a type of military attack.

When you think about it, Steve — not that you haven’t done way too much of that already — horses don’t really “run” either. Wouldn’t your careening carriage be involved in a “hit and gallop”? Well, for all your diligent brain work, here’s a bonus factlet for you. According to the OED, “the runs,” that ancient and distressing intestinal condition, dates in print from only the 1960s.