rampage

Running amok on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

From Scots rampage, equivalent to ramp +‎ -age. Perhaps influenced by Middle English rampnen (“to force, ram”), from Old English *hrampian, from Proto-West Germanic *hrampōn (“to obstruct, hinder”), see ramp.

• IPA^(key): /ˈɹæmpeɪd͡ʒ/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Audio (US):

  (file)

rampage (plural rampages)

1. A course of violent, frenzied action.
   • 2006, Edwin Black, chapter 1, in Internal Combustion‎^[1]:

     Blast after blast, fiery outbreak after fiery outbreak, like a flaming barrage from within, […] most of Edison's grounds soon became an inferno. As though on an incendiary rampage, the fires systematically devoured the contents of Edison's headquarters and facilities.

2. Wild partying, typically a drinking binge
   • 1922, James Joyce, Ulysses:

     Great card he was. Waltzing in Stamer street with Ignatius Gallaher on a Sunday morning, the landlady's two hats pinned on his head. Out on the rampage all night.

• on the rampage

rampage (third-person singular simple present rampages, present participle rampaging, simple past and past participle rampaged)

1. To move about wildly or violently.
   • 2014 November 27, Ian Black, “Courts kept busy as Jordan works to crush support for Isis”, in The Guardian:

     It is a sunny morning in Amman and the three uniformed judges in Jordan’s state security court are briskly working their way through a pile of slim grey folders on the bench before them. Each details the charges against 25 or so defendants accused of supporting the fighters of the Islamic State (Isis), now rampaging across Syria and Iraq under their sinister black banners and sending nervous jitters across the Arab world.

• go on the rampage

• ramp
• rampant