Find the word definition

Crossword clues for rampant

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
rampant
adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
corruption
▪ Inflation running at 57 %, record unemployment, rampant corruption and real threats to democracy.
inflation
▪ The rampant inflation that followed Henry VIII's currency speculations and which his successors could hardly limit hit them most of all.
▪ The scourge of unemployment was added to that of rampant inflation.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
rampant garden weeds
▪ Corruption soon became rampant.
▪ It wasn't military action but rampant disease that finally caused the population to surrender.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ A rich soil soon becomes home to rampant weeds which smother less competitive, more attractive plants.
▪ Already, voters seem to think political corruption is rampant.
▪ But the greed and the amorality ar not as rampant as the public seems to think.
▪ Inflation - rampant since independence - now went mad.
▪ The game was hardly artistic, flowing with penalties and turnovers and rampant sloppiness.
▪ The scourge of unemployment was added to that of rampant inflation.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Rampant

Rampant \Ramp"ant\ (r[a^]mp"ant), a. [F., p. pr. of ramper to creep. See Ramp, v.]

  1. Ramping; leaping; springing; rearing upon the hind legs; hence, raging; furious.

    The fierce lion in his kind Which goeth rampant after his prey.
    --Gower.

    [The] lion . . . rampant shakes his brinded mane.
    --Milton.

  2. Ascending; climbing; rank in growth; exuberant.

    The rampant stalk is of unusual altitude.
    --I. Taylor.

  3. (Her.) Rising with fore paws in the air as if attacking; -- said of a beast of prey, especially a lion. The right fore leg and right hind leg should be raised higher than the left. Rampant arch.

    1. An arch which has one abutment higher than the other.

    2. Same as Rampant vault, below.

      Rampant gardant (Her.), rampant, but with the face turned to the front.

      Rampant regardant, rampant, but looking backward.

      Rampant vault (Arch.), a continuous wagon vault, or cradle vault, whose two abutments are located on an inclined plane, such as the vault supporting a stairway, or forming the ceiling of a stairway.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
rampant

late 14c., "standing on the hind legs" (as a heraldic lion often does), thus, also, "fierce, ravenous" (late 14c.), from Old French rampant, present participle of ramper "to climb, scale, mount" (see rampage (v.)). Sense of "growing without check" (in running rampant), first recorded 1610s, probably is via the notion of "fierce disposition" or else preserves the older French sense.

Wiktionary
rampant

a. 1 (context originally English) rearing on both hind legs with the forelegs extended. 2 (context heraldry English) rearing on its hind leg(s), with a foreleg raised and in profile. 3 (context architecture English) tilted, said of an arch with one side higher than the other, or a vault whose two abutments are located on an inclined plane. 4 unrestrained or unchecked, usually in a negative manner.

WordNet
rampant
  1. adj. unrestrained and violent; "rampant aggression"

  2. rearing on left hind leg with forelegs elevated and head usually in profile; "a lion rampant" [syn: rampant(ip), rearing]

Wikipedia
Rampant (album)

Rampant is the fifth studio album by the Scottish hard rock band Nazareth, released in 1974. It was the third of their LP albums to be produced by Roger Glover, and proved to be the last time they would work with him.

Usage examples of "rampant".

Ramses had graduated to long trousers that yearthe sudden elongation of his lower limbs having made that decision advisable on aesthetic if no other groundsand with his curly hair brushed into a rampant crest, he resembled a critical stork.

Imagination seized on distortions and ran rampant, until quivering flesh balked at mapping the scope of an ordeal driven amok.

Bellamy becomes Sir John Bellamy, nominally for his services as town-clerk of Roxham, and I hear that old Sir Percy is now perfectly rampant, and goes about cursing her ladyship up hill and down dale, and declaring that he has been shockingly taken-in.

His curiosity running rampant, Blitzkrieg pushed open the doors and stepped inside.

The tawny lion, pawing to get free His hinder parts, then springs as broke from bonds, And rampant shakes his brinded mane.

In their understandable zeal to go transrational, they often embrace any prerational occasion simply because it is nonrationalany occasion that looks biocentrically oriented, from horticultural planting mythology to rampant tribalism to blood magic and sensual glorification of a sentimental nature, all in the name, of course, of saving Gaia.

Rampant vegetation was rising to clog the muskeg swamps, and clouds of mosquito and black fly buzzed and swirled above the soft surface.

Morand was afraid, horribly afraid, that the penetralia mentis awful had escaped and was rampant.

Killdeer in behalf of the Sarpent, who has done an untimorsome thing to let them rampant devils so plainly know that he is in their neighborhood.

The sheltron on the Scottish left, rampant and savage, forced the English right so far back that a great gap appeared between the English centre, behind its stone wall, and the retreating division on its right.

More important diseases such as trichinosis, which once was universally rampant when mankind ate uncooked or unprocessed pork, are unthinkable nowadays.

Frank was wearing a business suit, but the tie he wore seemed geared to spring as wella riot of daisies rampant on a pale green field.

Quite possibly Adams had fallen victim to malaria, which in the heat of summer could be rampant in European seaports.

I can wedge the happy nuptials in between my rampant bacchanalia and my debauching of virgins.

Drawn by a certain fascination, Brevis returned once to the blister maze and cautiously sampled the now rampant image.