Definition of "run up" [run up]

• Of a bowler, to run, or walk up to the bowling crease in order to bowl a ball. (verb)
• To bring a flag to the top of its flag pole. (verb)
• To make something, usually an item of clothing, very quickly. (verb)
• To accumulate a debt. (verb)
• The action of running up; the area of the pitch used by the bowler to run up, the start of which he marks with a small marker (noun)

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• "Men, for example, were better equipped to run up their psychic bank accounts than women, and the delicate sensibilities of the “aristocracy of skill and talent” were more responsive to the pleasures of good living than the clodlike pleasure machines of the laboring classes."
• "Of Ceely Trevillian and the affair at the distillery I can say no more than that I had the misfortune to run up against a man of birth and brain with no better outlet for his talents than intrigue, conspiracy and manipulation."
• "They close down one lane of traffic for emergency vehicles, and as we slow to a bumper-to-bumper crawl, these black kids run up to the bus windows with their cell phone cameras to see if they can take pictures of the dead body, the three-hundred-dollar sneakers poking out from under the sheet a giveaway of how old these corpses are."