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A scene from the movie Warrior:

Paddy: Have a heart, Brendan.

Brendan: You listen to me. You take your "have a heart" bullshit and you run it down the road. Yeah, run it out with someone that doesn't know you like I do.

Are run it down the road and run it out phrasal verbs here? I can't find dictionary entries of these two phrasal verbs that fit this context. It appears Brendan is saying: "You take your bullshit elsewhere." But what does run mean here exactly? I know run is one of the words with the most meanings in the English language. But I have looked through the Oxford Dictionaries and Merriam Webster, but can't be sure which meaning this usage is.

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This is very idiomatic usage, I'm not surprised that you don't find examples in the dictionary; I can't claim that I've ever heard either phrase. I think you're correct in considering them to be phrasal verbs.

Your analysis of the phrases is plausible.

Phrases I do hear in business contexts:

Let's run that idea past XXX

Meaning to seek XXX's opinion

Let's run that up the flagpole,

Meaning canvas the opinions of a wider community. That example is a shorter version of the complete phrase:

Let's run that up the flagpole, see whether anyone salutes

I'm then reading

run it out with someone that doesn't know you like I do

to mean: "take the idea to someone who will believe it"

and it is being used as a emphasis for the previous phrase

Take "Have a heart" somewhere else far away

Take it to someone who might believe it

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  • +1 Thank you for the answer. In your second example, what do you mean by "optionally with"?
    – Eddie Kal
    Commented Aug 5, 2018 at 22:03
  • I've expanded the answer, hope it's clear now.
    – djna
    Commented Aug 6, 2018 at 4:57

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