Brewer's: Run Amuck

(See Amuck.)

“It was like a Malay running amuck, only with a more deadly weapon.” —The Times.

Frontless and satire-proof he scours the streets, And runs an Indian-muck at all he meets.

Dryden: The Hind and the Panther.

Run a Rig (To). To play a trick, to suffer a sportive trick. Thus, John Gilpin, when he set out, “little thought of running such a rig” as he suffered. Florio gives as a meaning of rig, “the tricks of a wanton;” hence frolicsome and deceptive tricks. The rig of a ship means the way it is rigged, hence its appearance: and, as pirates deceive by changing the rig of their vessel, so rig came to mean a trick to deceive, a trick, a frolicsome deception.

Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
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