bend over backwards

1. 1.

   try very hard to please someone

   “She falls over backwards when she sees her mother-in-law”

   Synonymsfall over backwards

   Broaderact

Questions about bend over backwards

What does bend over backwards mean?

bend over backwards means "try very hard to please someone".

What is another word for bend over backwards?

Close synonyms include fall over backwards. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is bend over backwards a common word?

bend over backwards is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.