leave no stone unturned
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
To thoroughly investigate or search every possible option
Literally: to lift and examine every stone
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
Mr Allen said the union leaders would leave no stone unturned in their efforts to save the Leyland - DAF plants at Glasgow, Birmingham, Leyland, Chorley and Thame.
We shall leave no stone unturned in our search for the culprit.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “leave no stone unturned” mean?
To thoroughly investigate or search every possible option Literally: to lift and examine every stone
Is “leave no stone unturned” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.