[Idiom] fall short of and fall short by

[Aamir Tariq]

When we say "fall short of" or "fall short by" something, we always mean we lack something that we are supposed to have.

Now

When we say, when somebody falls short of something, does it means he falls short of something?

And when we say, when somebody falls short by something, does it means he falls short of a quantity/number of something as in the example below?

The humanitarian organization fell short of funds for the rehabilitation of flood victims, so they decided to raise more money but at the end of the day they fell short by two hundred thousand dollars.

And can we replace "fall' by "run" in both the cases?

We ran short of money.
We ran short by two hundred dollars. However, "fell short by" sounds more natural to me in this case?Regards,
Aamir the Global Citizen

 

[GoesStation]

Fall short of is the general case. Fall short by requires a specific quantity and requires at least an implied of clause: They fell short [of their goal] by two hundred thousand dollars.

 

[Aamir Tariq]

What about run short?

 

[GoesStation]

Run short doesn't seem natural to me. Google's N-gram viewer shows that although various inflections of run short exist, they're much less common than inflections of ​fall short.

 

[Aamir Tariq]

Run short doesn't seem natural to me. Google's N-gram viewer shows that although various inflections of run short exist, they're much less common than inflections of ​fall short.

Thanks, we use "out" more frequently with "run", as in "we ran out of money", but it would also change the meaning completely. we ran out of money would mean we were completely out of money while we we fell short of money would mean had money but we lacked the required amount of money.

 

[Tdol]

I wouldn't use run short in your example.