Rundown

How to spell rundown

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce rundown

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does rundown mean?

1. nounA brief summary or quick review of the main points of something.
2. adjectiveIn poor condition through neglect, or feeling weak and exhausted.

Rundown in a sentence

• noun

  The manager gave the team a quick rundown of the new safety rules.

• adjective

  They bought a rundown cottage and spent two years restoring it.

• noun

  Before the trip she emailed everyone a rundown of the daily schedule.

• adjective

  After months of overtime he felt utterly rundown and booked a holiday.

Where does rundown come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a compound built from two of the oldest words in English, 'run' and 'down', both inherited from Old English (rinnan/iernan 'to move quickly on foot' and dun 'hill', which gave the directional sense 'downward'). The combination grew out of the phrasal verb 'run down', which carried several practical meanings: a clock or battery that runs down winds itself out of energy, while to run down a list meant to read or recite through it quickly from top to bottom. From that second image the noun 'rundown' emerged in twentieth-century American usage, meaning a quick summary that goes through the points one by one. The adjective sense, describing something worn out or dilapidated, comes from the worn-down, exhausted idea of energy running out. The spelling trap is purely the closing up of the two words into one solid form, since writers hesitate between 'rundown', 'run-down', and 'run down' depending on whether it is a noun, an adjective, or a verb phrase.

How the word is built

• run (verb: to run)
• down (adverb/particle), a noun and adjective formed from the phrasal verb 'run down'