back and forth
374
2.0
- idiom
:
de un lado a otro
- She paced back and forth in the waiting room, anxious for news about her surgery.
- move back and forth
- shift back and forth
- shuttle back and forth
And they begin to spar back and forth verbally.
- And they begin to spar back and forth verbally.
- And he drove a motorcycle back and forth from the front lines.
- So we will go back and forth between live questions.
- She would walk all up and down the stairs back and forth completely asleep.
- So I, I, I went back and forth for many, many months.
- And does it swap back and forth across couples?
- So you can see that really it's actually going back and forth harmonically.
- So the feds kept on seeing me come back and forth into Cambridge.
- He says that he's not ping ponging back and forth and not playing you both.
Examples
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As the discussion continues, the role of lead teacher goes back and forth between both professionals.
Academic text (2015) -
She goes back and forth from Italy like a ping-pong ball.
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So we will go back and forth between live questions.
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And we probably went back and forth for three to four months.
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I saw you walking back and forth looking for your car.
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Then you move your foot back and forth.
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We go back and forth until we run out of things to say, yeah.
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And I'm just kind of going back and forth between these two.
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Various papers and articles were sent back and forth between the consultant and local leaders.
Academic text (1990) -
Why waste all that valuable time commuting back and forth when you can walk to see your son right from here?
Synonyms
208
1.9
Moving both ways along the whole length of something
24
3.7
Moving left and right repeatedly from a middle point
8
3.4
Moving back and forth between two places
7
3.2
To move one way and then the other way again and again
Antonyms
How Crosswise
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase "back and forth" is directly built from the directional adverbs 'back' (toward the rear) and 'forth' (forward) joined by 'and', which literally signals movement in one direction and then the opposite. This compositional, cross-linguistically common pattern follows normal English coordination of motion terms, so a B1 learner who knows the constituents will readily infer the repeated alternating-direction meaning.
Etymology
Back and forth paints a simple picture of movement to the back and then to the forth, like the swing of a clock or a person walking one way and then the other. So it means 'in one direction and then the opposite, often repeatedly'.