high and low
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
Everywhere or in all possible places
Literally: searching from the highest to the lowest location
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
We all searched high and low for the missing documents, but they were never found.
Consider, for example, the different challenges posed to the group by the Devil's Advocate who is high and low status.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed on Wikipedia “Irreversible binomial” (CC BY-SA 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-29). Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “high and low” mean?
Everywhere or in all possible places Literally: searching from the highest to the lowest location
Is “high and low” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.