fall over backwards

1. 1.

   try very hard to please someone

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

   Synonymsbend over backwards

   Broaderact

Questions about fall over backwards

What does fall over backwards mean?

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

What is another word for fall over backwards?

Close synonyms include bend 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 fall over backwards a common word?

fall 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.