No distance left to run.
Can you help me with understanding of the meaning of the above phrase? In which context is it used?
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Is it supposed to have a special idiomatic meaning? And what do you mean by "in which context is it used?" If it's sane and grammatical English it can happen to be found everywhere.– M.A.R.Commented Jan 21, 2015 at 18:33
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1Means nothing to me, as it stands. I mean, I understand the words & the implication, but it's not any kind of common idiom. "No place left to run" is, however, quite common. NGRAM– DoneWithThis.Commented Jan 21, 2015 at 18:39
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3These questions are much easier to answer when context is provided. Where did you hear/read this?– J.R. ♦Commented Jan 21, 2015 at 19:13
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2 Answers
No distance left to run could mean "The race is over, I've reached the finish line".
No food left to eat = All of the food has been consumed.
No distance left to run = All of the distance has been traversed.
In those sentences:
to eat = to be eaten.
to run = to be run.
Passive infinitive.
It is the burden and title of a song by the band Blur, and the title of a film about the band.
It has no idiomatic meaning that I know of. To say you have such-and-such a distance 'left to go/travel/walk/run' means that you are presently at that distance from your projected endpoint; so to have no distance left to run means you have arrived at the endpoint.
In the song the line seems to refer to the end of a romantic relationship; the choice of run suggests either a competition for the estranged lover's favor or (more likely) a sense on the singer's part that he has been in some sense 'running' to keep up with her (her demands or her will to move the relationship in a particular direction or something of that sort) and that he is now wholly exhausted by the effort.
answered Jan 21, 2015 at 19:34
