make a run for it

• have a run for it (obsolete)

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• Rhymes: -ɪt

make a run for it (third-person singular simple present makes a run for it, present participle making a run for it, simple past and past participle made a run for it)

1. (idiomatic) To attempt to escape; to flee; to run away.
   • 1824, George Soane, Pride Shall Have a Fall: A Comedy‎, London: Hurst, Robinson & Co., act 4, scene 2, page 79:

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

   • 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:

     [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.

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

     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 [...]

2. (idiomatic) To run so as to avoid being late.
   • 1857, Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown’s School Days‎, Part 2, Chapter 6:

     [...] 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.

   • 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.

• (attempt to escape): make a break for it