neck
verb
- caress amorously/strangle/rein horse
noun
- part of the body, on many terrestrial or secondarily aquatic vertebrates, that distinguishes the head from the torso or trunk
- part of a ballisitic weapon such as a cartridge, bullet or shell
- musical instrument part
- long narrow tract of land projecting from the main body
- human neck
Wiktionary
Pronunciation: /ˈnɛk/ / [ˈnɛk]
noun
Etymology: From Danish nøkke, Swedish näck.
- A shapeshifting water spirit in Germanic mythology and folklore; a nix.
“The Neck no more upon the river sings. And no Mermaid to bleach her linen flings Upon the waves in the mild solar ray.”
“The beautiful Nix or Nixie who allures the young fisher or hunter to seek her embraces in the wave which brings his death, the Neck who seizes upon and drowns the maidens who sport upon his banks, the river-spirit who still yearly in some parts of Germany demands tribute of human life, are all forms of the ancient Nicor[.]”
verb
Etymology: From Middle English nekke, nakke, from Old English hnecca, *hnæcca (“neck, nape”), from Proto-West Germanic *hnakkō, from Proto-Germanic *hnakkô (“nape, neck”), from Proto-Indo-European *knog-, *kneg- (“back of the head, nape, neck”). Cognate with Scots nek (“neck”), North Frisian neek, neeke, Nak (“neck”), Saterland Frisian Näkke (“neck”), West Frisian nekke (“neck”), Dutch nek (“neck”), German Low German Nack (“neck”), German Nacken (“nape of the neck”), Danish nakke (“neck”), Swedish nacke (“nape of the neck”), Icelandic hnakki (“neck”), Tocharian A kñuk (“neck, nape”). Possibly a mutated variant of *kneug/k (compare Old English hnocc (“hook, penis”), Welsh cnwch (“joint, knob”), Latvian knaūķis (“dwarf”). Doublet of nek. More at nook. Displaced halse (“neck, throat”) and swire (“neck”).
- To hang by the neck; strangle; kill, eliminate.
“Go neck yourself.”
- To intently kiss or cuddle; to canoodle.
“Alan and Betty were necking in the back of a car when Betty's dad caught them.”
“Molly had been in love with Sick Boy since he necked with her in a seedy disco-bar in Leith a few weeks ago. Sick Boy had made a drunken point about HIV transmission and to illustrate it had spent most of the night french-kissing her.”
- To drink or swallow rapidly.
“Actually, mostly I swan around in my silver sports car, necking drugs, and feeling sorry for myself.”
“In the dim light, punters sit sipping raspberry-flavoured Tokyo martinis, losing the freestyle sushi off their chopsticks or necking Asahi beer.”
- To decrease in diameter.
“Since this temperature would place the bolt in its creep range, it will slowly stretch, necking down as it does so. Eventually it will get too thin to support the weight, and the bolt will break.”