left and right

English

Alternative forms

• right and left
• left, right and center, left, right and centre
• right, left and center, right, left and centre

Noun

left and right (plural left and rights)

1. (shooting) Two rapid successful shots from a double-barrelled gun.
   • 1956, Gerald Durrell, chapter 12, in My Family and Other Animals, London: Penguin, pages 180-81:

     Apparently a left-and-a-right in hunting parlance meant to shoot and kill two birds or animals in quick succession, first with your left barrel and then with your right.

Adverb

left and right (not comparable)

1. (Canada, US) All over the place; indiscriminately; frequently or excessively.

   You can't expect to eat desserts left and right and not gain weight.

   • 2014, Linus Torvalds, DebConf: Q&A with Linus Torvalds:

     And then all the distributions come in and they screw it all up. Because they break binary compatibility left and right

Translations

all over the place

• Azerbaijani: sağa-sola
• Catalan: a tort i a dret
• Finnish: kaksin käsin
• French: à tout-va (fr), à droite et à gauche (fr), à tort et à travers (fr), à dêtre et à senêtre (archaic, regional), à dextre et à senestre (archaic)
• Galician: a destro e sestro (archaic)
• Icelandic: hægri vinstri
• Norman: à dêtre et à s'nêtre
• Occitan: a tòrt e a dret, a tòrt e a travèrs, de tòrt e de travèrs, guerlin-guerlan, flisco-flasco, liro-laro
• Polish: na prawo i lewo (pl), na prawo i na lewo
• Portuguese: a torto e a direito
• Russian: направо и налево (ru) (napravo i nalevo)
• Serbo-Croatian:

  Cyrillic: лије̑во-де̏сно

  Roman: lijȇvo-dȅsno

• Spanish: a diestro y siniestro
• Swedish: till höger och vänster
• Telugu: ఎడా పెడా (eḍā peḍā)
• Turkish: önüne gelen
• Yoruba: lọ́tùn-ún lósì, sọ́tùn-ún sósì

Anagrams

• right and left