Learn English – The meaning of the phrase “peak by valley”

phrase-meaning

A landscape of ideas that peak by valley stretches from the
everyday to the wholly unfamiliar.

What does the phrase "peak by valley" mean?

Here is the link of the original context: http://goo.gl/LDivGa

Best Answer

This is not an ordinary English idiom. In fact, Googling the phrase and eliminating accidental collocations reveals only one other instance across the entire internet, this drawn from a piece of fan-fiction romance:

Each kiss they shared was like an emblem stamped across their bodies, every movement of their hands a cartographer mapping out a region peak by valley.

I can only suppose that this is a twist on the conventional construction "X by X", meaning "working from one X (of many) to the next", as when you examine a list "item by item" or build a house "brick by brick".

The fan-fiction author varies varies this by referring to a series of pairs: peaks and valleys = ups and downs = periods of rest and periods of excitations.

I suspect your author means something similar; but he obscures this by aligning the expression with singular the everyday and the unfamiliar. It would be clearer (but not necessarily much better) if he wrote

... a landscape of ideas that stretches from valley to peak, from the everyday to the wholly unfamiliar.

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