to run [something] into the ground

[Mark Mandel]

I went to OED online and searched full text for "run into the ground".

run, v.
B.I.42.

 e. run (a thing) into the ground, to carry to excess, to overdo; to exhaust
or defeat by constant pursuit or pressure; to destroy by excessive use.
orig. U.S.

1836 W. T. PORTER in Spirit of Times 9 July 162/1 It's no use to run the
thing into the ground. a1859 in Bartlett Dict. Amer. (ed. 2) 374 The
advocates of temperance have run it into the ground by their extreme
measures. 1884 L. GRONLUND Co-oper. Commw. iii. 74 After having run this
Social ‘Order’ into the ground, it will be supplanted by a new principle.
1947 J. STEINBECK Wayward Bus viii. 135 Well, start feeling good, then, and
don't run it into the ground. Nobody likes sick people very long. 1955 Times
3 Aug. 3/7 Close marking, hard tackling, and shrewd tactical kicking, until
the opposition has been ‘run into the ground’. 1977 N.Y. Rev. Bks. 31 Mar.
21/1 Crossman during his brief tenure as editor..just about ran the paper
into the ground.

Mark Mandel


On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 10:07 PM, George Thompson
<george.thompson at nyu.edu>wrote:

> The OED doesn't seem to have this expression.  It's at least 160 years old.
>
> This is from an editorial on the great improvements made in the newspaper
> business in the last 25 years.
>
> The business of special expressing, of issuing extras or second, third and
> fourth editions, were no more dreamed of then than the possibility of
> publishing on the 16th, at New York, a debate in Parliament of the 3rd of
> any given month.  And we might go on to run the comparison, as they say in
> the South, "into the ground."  But, to make an end, we may say that nothing
> can be more unlike, in every respect, than the newspaper press of the
> present time, and the newspaper press of even a quarter of a century ago.
>        New York Morning Express, February 5, 1846, p. 2, col. 2
>
> GAT
>
> George A. Thompson
> Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
> Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.
>

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