come hell or high water
- idiom
- Informal
- Well, come hell or high water, you get it done, don't you?
- get that man come hell or high water
- come hell or high water, I was going
If they know you are going to get them to that value come hell or high water, they will take the risk.
- If they know you are going to get them to that value come hell or high water, they will take the risk.
- What I respect about that is that he believes something and he's, you know, he's, he's willing to stand by it come hell or high water.
- But hey, you know, come hell or high water, the goofs, they come, the booths, they come quicker.
Examples
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Come hell or high water, Redondo Beach's long-neglected King Harbor will get a fancy new boutique hotel.
Blog text (1) -
McKenzie has a plan and is sticking with that plan come hell or high water, and while some of the fanbase don't like it, that's just the way it works.
Blog text (16) -
We're going to do our best tomorrow, come hell or high water, and people will watch it.
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If they know you are going to get them to that value come hell or high water, they will take the risk.
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I am gonna make this work, come hell or high water.
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Set a date and hold to it, come hell or high water.
Blog text (27) -
I promised myself when I started this blog that, come hell or high water, I would post every week.
Blog text (12) -
And come hell or high water, that's just how he intended to play it.
Fiction book (1999) -
Come hell or high water, she's not doing it again - not this time, and not later.
Blog text (32) -
No matter what happens, I will support my friend, come hell or high water.
Synonyms
A phrase that says something will happen despite problems
Willing to do anything to get something, even if it is dangerous or expensive
To succeed despite very bad chances
No matter what happens
Says that something will be done no matter what problems happen
Do something even if it costs a lot
Antonyms
How Determined
Surface Forms
Morphology
come + hell + or + high + water
The phrase is a fixed idiomatic concessive formula whose figurative sense ('no matter what difficulties') does not follow compositionally from the literal meanings of 'come', 'hell', 'high' and 'water'. A B1 learner who knows the individual words would not reliably infer this meaning without prior exposure, so the expression is best treated as opaque.
Etymology
The idiom come hell or high water paints a picture of two extreme problems: burning hell or rising high water. One popular story says it means you will do something even if those things happen, so it now means 'no matter what'.