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TO AND FRO
I. (adverb)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Moving from one place to another and back again
Example:
the old man just sat on the porch and rocked back and forth all day
Synonyms:
back and forth; backward and forward; to and fro
Classified under:
Context examples:
It was a terrible blow; but he did not seem to mind it, but seized him also, and struggled with the three of us, pulling us to and fro as if we were kittens.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
Her approbation, at once general and minute, warm and incessant, could not but please; and for another half-hour they were all walking to and fro, between the different rooms, some suggesting, some attending, and all in happy enjoyment of the future.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
Brown liquor-stained tables were dotted about in it, and round one of these half a dozen formidable-looking men were seated, while one, the roughest of all, was perched upon the table itself, swinging his legs to and fro.
(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
The dead robber swung slowly to and fro in the wintry wind, a fixed smile upon his swarthy face, and his bulging eyes still glaring down the highway of which he had so long been the terror; on a sheet of parchment upon his breast was printed in rude characters;
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Though the cook had a cubby-hole of a state-room opening off from the cabin, in the cabin itself he had never dared to linger or to be seen, and he flitted to and fro, once or twice a day, a timid spectre.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
The party spread itself abroad, in a fan shape, shouting and leaping to and fro.
(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
My aunt was restless, too, for I frequently heard her walking to and fro.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
There was a crowd about it all day long, and the tenders were constantly flying to and fro with important faces and rattling money boxes.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
" was demanded confusedly on all hands. But for the moonlight they would have been in complete darkness. They ran to and fro; they crowded together: some sobbed, some stumbled: the confusion was inextricable.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
You see, remarked Holmes, as we paced to and fro in front of the house, this marriage rather simplifies matters.
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
