He's been described as "an inspiration" to jihadists the world over, but this morning 29-year-old Australian man Musa Cerantonio is languishing in a jail cell in the Philippines. (Aussie ABC)
What does the highlighted phrase mean? Does it modify the previous noun, jihadists, and meaning: in the world that is over there?
This is a fixed phrase with two forms:
all the world over
the world over (This version is more common.)
It's a literary postmodifier meaning "all over the world; everywhere; throughout the world".
Since it's a fixed phrase with rather unique grammar, we don't really need to analyze it. But if we do so anyway, we might say something like this: The preposition over takes (all) the world as a complement, even though it comes afterwards instead of before. This is unusual, but not unprecedented—it is similar to the preposition ago.
Since the entire phrase is a postmodifier, it follows what it modifies. In this case, that means it modifies the noun jihadists.
It does not mean "in the world that is over there".
The world over is another way -now rather literary and clichéd- of saying all over the world, meaning “at places throughout the world”. It does modify jihadists.
