in the long run

Over a relatively long or extended length of time in the future. While the company was initially criticized for their new marketing strategy, it seems to have paid off for them in the long run. I know it's a lot of money to spend on a mattress, but trust me, it will be worth it in the long run.

Over a lengthy period of time, in the end. For example, He realized that in the long run, their argument wouldn't seem so awful. This expression, which originated as at the long run in the early 1600s, presumably alludes to a runner who continues on his course to the end. Economist John Maynard Keynes used it in a much-quoted quip about economic planning: "In the long run we are all dead." The antonym, in the short run, meaning "over a short period of time," dates only from the 1800s. The novelist George Eliot used both in a letter (October 18, 1879): "Mrs. Healy's marriage is surely what you expected in the long or short run."

COMMON People use in the long run or over the long run to talk about how things happen or develop over a long period of time. Taking time out to get fit is time well spent and will benefit you in the long run. Her judgement didn't seem to have done him much harm in the long run. Hiring new employees is essential for virtually all firms, at least over the long run.

Over a long period of time; in the end. The term refers to running a race, specifically to a runner who is passed by others at the beginning but pulls ahead at the end (analogous to the fable of the slow but steady tortoise who wins over the fast but erratic hare). Originally it also was put as at the long run (seventeenth century). One of economist John Maynard Keynes’s most famous remarks concerning economic planning was, “In the long run we are all dead.”