to go to hell and back
1
8.0
- idiom
:
pasar por un infierno
- The team went to hell and back during the project, but their hard work ultimately paid off.
But there's something about going to hell and back and surviving and cut living to tell the tale that meant I had.
- But there's something about going to hell and back and surviving and cut living to tell the tale that meant I had.
Examples
-
Now, we went to hell and back to get this thing.
-
I'll go to hell and back to get away from her.
-
It's fair to say we went to hell and back with the loss of those 10 little ones that couldn't make it.
Blog text (13) -
But there's something about going to hell and back and surviving and cut living to tell the tale that meant I had.
-
He used to play that for me all the time, said that he'd go to hell and back for me.
-
I'd go to hell and back on the word of Wyatt earp and so would half the men in this room.
-
After facing numerous challenges, I can honestly say I've gone to hell and back just to achieve my goals.
-
She felt she had gone to hell and back after her difficult year, but now she was ready to move forward.
Synonyms
∞
3.6
To experience a difficult or painful time in your life
15
7.0
To have a very hard and painful time in life
How Difficult
1
8.0
15
7.0
- Informal
2
6.5
241
3.7
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly built from the constituents: 'hell' denotes extreme suffering, 'go to' indicates undergoing/entering that state, and 'and back' signals returning or surviving it, so a learner who knows the words can infer ‘experience severe difficulties and recover’. This metaphorical motion-to-and-return pattern is cross-linguistically familiar and follows predictable compositional logic, making it immediately comprehensible to a B1 learner.
Etymology
Go to hell and back shows the image of someone going into hell, a place of terrible pain, and then coming back out. That's why it means 'to go through very hard times and survive'.