idiom · neutral

run out of time

/rʌn aʊt əv taɪm/run·out·of·TIME

speakingtask2

to have no time left to finish something

Examples

I ran out of time and couldn't finish the exam.

We ran out of time for questions at the end of the presentation.

She nearly finished the report but ran out of time.

Band 8 sentence

I mismanaged the first two paragraphs and by the end I had run out of time to write a proper conclusion.

Collocations

  • completely run out of time
  • run out of time during the exam

Word family

run out phrasal verbran out verb (past)running out verb (gerund)

Common mistakes

run out timerun out of time

ran out from timeran out of time

Say it for a higher band

5no time6not enough time7+run out of time

Synonyms

be short on time

Easily confused

lose time

We lost time because of the heavy traffic.

Related words

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In Time

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