Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's English Dictionary - amok

If a person or animal runs amok, they behave in a violent and uncontrolled way. A soldier was arrested after running amok with a vehicle through Berlin. PHRASE: V inflects AMONG Frequency: The word is one of the 700 most common words in English. Note: The form 'amongst' is also used, but is more literary. 1. Someone or something that is situated or moving among a group of things or people is surrounded by them. They walked among the crowds in Red Square. ...a little house among the trees. PREP 2. If you are among people of a particular kind, you are with them and having contact with them. Things weren’t so bad, after all. I was among friends again... I was brought up among people who read and wrote a lot. PREP 3. If someone or something is among a group, they are a member of that group and share its characteristics. A fifteen year old girl was among the injured... Also among the speakers was the new American ambassador to Moscow. PREP 4. If you want to focus on something that is happening within a particular group of people, you can say that it is happening among that group. Unemployment is quite high, especially among young people. PREP 5. If something happens among a group of people, it happens within the whole of that group or between the members of that group. I am sick of all the quarrelling among politicians who should be concentrating on vital issues. PREP 6. If something such as a feeling, opinion, or situation exists among a group of people, most of them have it or experience it. The biggest fear among parents thinking of using the Internet is that their children will be exposed to pornography... PREP 7. If something applies to a particular person or thing among others, it also applies to other people or things. ...a news conference attended among others by our foreign affairs correspondent... PREP 8. If something is shared among a number of people, some of it is given to all of them. Most of the furniture was left to the neighbours or distributed among friends... PREP 9. If people talk, fight, or agree among themselves, they do it together, without involving anyone else. European farm ministers disagree among themselves... PREP: PREP pron-refl