high and low
7
3.6
- idiom
- Informal
:
por todas partes
- How I've searched high and low, under every rock, it seems, - with no sign of them anywhere.
We've been searching high and low for survivors, for anyone that could testify.
- We've been searching high and low for survivors, for anyone that could testify.
- I searched high and low for that shit.
Examples
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I searched high and low for the answers to this particular confusion.
Blog text (15) -
How often, when Rachel or Brian arrived to pick Iris up, had they had to search high and low, calling from room to room?
Fiction book (1998) -
My men and I will search the forest high and low.
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We looked high and low.
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Many people have been searching high and low to find their partners for life.
Blog text (7) -
Still, searching high and low for the perfect product becomes a matter of trial and error.
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During this terrible plague, the peoples of the islands had sought high and low, near and far, for relief and found none.
Fiction book (2001) -
We've been searching high and low for survivors, for anyone that could testify.
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I searched high and low for these new burgers, but to no avail.
Blog text (29) -
We searched high and low for the missing keys, but they were nowhere to be found.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The expression joins the antonyms 'high' and 'low' with 'and' to indicate the full range of places (searching both high and low), so the sense 'everywhere' is a direct, predictable extension of the constituents. This opposites‑joined-to-mean-'everywhere' pattern is cross‑linguistically common, so a B1 learner who knows the words would very likely infer the MWE meaning.
Etymology
High and low gives a simple picture: people looking in the high places (like roofs and trees) and the low places (like under beds and in holes). So, saying you looked high and low means you searched 'everywhere'.