[General] run down

[Silverobama]

Hi.

Are the sentences with "run down" natural?

1) That clock ran down hours ago. (weird)
2) The old man was run down by a big lorry. (good)
3) He's always running me down. (weirdly uncommon)
4) The coal industry is running down. (perhaps good.)
5) This exhausting work is enough to run everyone down. (good)

Source: Personal notebook of sentences with unknown origins. (One might find them in iciba.com and dict.cn but those sources are not the original ones. They might have copied these sentences elsewhere. I first wrote down these sentences there in 2009.)

 

[jutfrank]

I have no idea what 1 is supposed to mean.

I can guess what 4 means but it's no good.

The other three are okay.

 

[emsr2d2]

I assume #1 refers to old-style clocks that need winding. Casting my mind back to when we had one, I can recall saying/hearing "The clock's run down" meaning, effectively, the same as "The clock's stopped".

 

[Skrej]

With #1, it could also refer to a count-down timer, although my initial thought was the same as emsr.