head over heels

1. 1
   adverb

   Deeply and helplessly, to the point of distraction; most often used of being in love.

   My grandparents fell head over heels in love the summer they met.

   By thirty she was head over heels in debt from student loans and credit cards.

   Similardeeply, hopelessly

   Note

   Most often it intensifies in love: fall head over heels in love, be head over heels in love. The same use reaches any state a person can be sunk in, especially debt and trouble, where it means up to the neck; Henry H. Rogers wrote to Mark Twain in 1904, "I am head over heels in trouble."

2. 2
   in loveadjective

   Hopelessly infatuated with someone; madly in love.

   Half the class was head over heels for the new exchange student.

   She has been head over heels with him since their first date.

   Similarsmitten, infatuated, besotted, lovestruck

   Note

   As an adjective it stands after be, and it names the beloved with either for or with: every girl is head over heels for the star of the math team, or an actor is head over heels with his young co-star from the start. It does not grade, since nobody is more head over heels than someone else, and its picture is the tumble of the somersaulting sense, turned into feeling.

3. 3
   upside downadverb

   Turning upside down in a tumble or somersault.

   The blast threw him head over heels into the ditch.

   The skier caught an edge and went head over heels down the slope.

   Note

   The phrase is found from the 1300s the other way round, as heels over head, which pictures being upside down far more sensibly, since head over heels is simply how we stand. The order flipped and the logic went with it, yet the tumbling picture survives in this sense. Jokier ways to describe the same fall include ass over teakettle and base over apex.

4. 4
   in a rushadverb

   At top speed, in a frantic rush.

   Investors rushed head over heels into the new tech stocks.

   Spooked by the thunder, the horses bolted head over heels for the barn.

   Similarheadlong, pell-mell

Showing meanings only. Show all 4