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Run five deep

Ansia Kammerlander

Senior Member
Italian
Please can you explain me the meaning of "running five deep" in this phrase?

In the peak summer months, this means crowds running five deep at the most popular tasting bars
Thank you very much, you can answer me in english or italian.
Marina
Meaning lined up 5 deep. For example, if there is a line of persons in front of a bar and then another line behind them and another until, if you are at the back, then there are four persons or lines of persons in front of you.
Ok, thanks a lot!
And sorry for having asked a non-english answer... I had misinterpreted the rules! ;-)
All by itself, it means nothing. Sentence and source, and any other helpful circumstance you can think of.
This is from Things (1919), by Sinclair Lewis:

"For rich women the social system in Vernon does provide more games than for men. The poor we have always with us, and the purpose of the Lord in providing the poor is to enable us of the better classes to amuse ourselves by investigating them and uplifting them and at dinners telling how charitable we are. The poor don't like it much. They have no gratitude. They would rather be uplifters themselves. But if they are taken firmly in hand they can be kept reasonably dependent and interesting for years.
The remnants of the energy that had once taken Mrs. Duke into the woods beyond the end of steel now drove her into poor-baiting. She was a committeewoman . She had pigeonholes of mysteriously important correspondence, and she hustled about in the limousine."

It is about a Minnesotta family that became rich.
Well, unfortunately the context doesn't help.

It's not a standard phrase. My guess (probably the same as yours) is that she sat on committees, stacked on top of committees, stacked on top of committees---a bit of hyperbole intended to say that she was a committeewoman not just skin-deep, but to her bones, and even to the very marrow of her bones
Could it mean the opposite? That she wasn't really committed to it, or that she doesn't want to get involved? This is what follows:

When her husband wanted to go back and do real work she was oratorical: "That's the trouble with the American man. He really likes his sordid office. No, dearie, you just enjoy your leisure for a while yet. As soon as we finish the campaign for censoring music you and I will run away and take a good trip--San Francisco and Honolulu."
Could it mean the opposite? That she wasn't really committed to it, or that she doesn't want to get involved? This is what follows:

When her husband wanted to go back and do real work she was oratorical: "That's the trouble with the American man. He really likes his sordid office. No, dearie, you just enjoy your leisure for a while yet. As soon as we finish the campaign for censoring music you and I will run away and take a good trip--San Francisco and Honolulu."

Undoubtedly this campaign is being conducted by one of her committees, so the committees take precedence over vacation time.
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