over and over again
268
1.0
- idiom
:
una y otra vez
- She practiced the piano piece over and over again to improve her skills.
- same things over and over again
- repeat over and over again
- tell over and over again
He also tried over and over again to acquire MIT.
- He also tried over and over again to acquire MIT.
- Over and over and over again I've been called bad.
- You see him doing this over and over again in his works.
- So something we see over and over again is expertise.
- Those ongoing betrayals are like breaking a bone over and over again in the same place.
- It's as though you play the grief over and over again every time you see them.
- Well, machine learning is doing it over and over again, but bigger.
- And so now you have video that's played over and over and over again on cable news.
- It's a myth and a lie told over and over again every time we go to court.
Examples
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Yes, so we can watch it over and over again.
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So something we see over and over again is expertise.
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And then we just keep doing that over and over again, OK.
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You see him doing this over and over again in his works.
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I just kept reading it over and over again, like, wow, wow.
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We see this over and over again, the same time, the same year.
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Now, over and over again in my career, this came up.
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This structure occurs over and over again in human transactions.
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We've seen this over and over again.
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There are many favorite compositions that they ask to hear over and over again.
Academic text (1994)
Synonyms
∞
1.0
Happens many times
556
1.0
Many times in a row
476
1.0
Happening many times in a short time
382
1.0
It happens again and again
255
1.0
Many times on different occasions
98
4.9
Happens many times, usually within a short time
91
2.3
Happens often at set times
73
1.8
Very often on many occasions
47
1.8
Happens again and again
6
2.6
It happens often
3
3.5
Again and again in the same way, often causing boredom or annoyance
1
6.3
A very large number of times that are hard to count
1
4.3
Happens again and again at regular times
Antonyms
How Often
740
1.0
268
1.0
476
1.0
∞
1.0
∞
1.0
539
1.0
∞
1.0
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'repeatedly' is directly signalled by the repetition of 'over' and the adverb 'again' — 'over' can mean 'again' in phrasal use (do it over), and duplicating it (over and over) clearly indicates repetition. This compositional pattern is common and cross-linguistically transparent, so a B1 learner who knows the constituents will readily infer the MWE meaning.
Etymology
Over and over again may come from the clear image of the word over being repeated, like painting the same spot or practicing a line many times. That's why it means 'repeatedly'.