fall all over oneself

Idioms

Also, fall over backwards. Make an inordinate effort to do something, try very hard or eagerly. For example, They fell all over themselves to be helpful, but only got in the way, or She fell over backwards trying to please her boss, but it got her nowhere. The first of these hyperbolic expressions dates from the late 1800s, the second from the mid-1900s.

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023