Talk:the world over

Exception to the rule?

I was intrigued by this adverbial phrase as it appears to be a unique rule-breaker. For a quasi-algebraic example -- ".. over the (whole) X .." -- X can be any noun that fits such as "town", "country", "population", etc. BUT ".. the (whole) X over .." is limited to just one noun - "world". Possibly "planet" would work also, but no other nouns that I can think of. Am I right in this? -- ALGRIF talk 11:00, 20 December 2024 (UTC)