Jakerdot
03-03-2011, 07:54 PM
Yo so I'm sitting here waiting for boot camp to start, and this fly man HavkinKnight uses the phrase 'Neck of the woods'..which gets me thinking.. That is a fine phrase and I would love to know the origin of it, so what I found was something like this:
-Some have suggested neck in this sense came from the Old Breton word cnoch and/or the Old German word hnack, both of which had a sense of "hill" or "summit" to identify a place.
-Neck has, also, been used in England, since around 1555, to describe a narrow strip of land jutting out into the water, presumably because it resembled an animal's neck.
-Early American settlers seem to have seen the same animal's neck in a narrow stand of trees or a logged settlement on the edge of a woods. Hence, your "neck of the woods" was your home or neighborhood.
So here is the thread, if you have any cool expressions you use or that you've heard people use, put them up, and throw up a little history about it, whether it be a theory or an actual story of origin.
p.s. Make sure you lols while your doing it to cuz life it better when its lols.
-Some have suggested neck in this sense came from the Old Breton word cnoch and/or the Old German word hnack, both of which had a sense of "hill" or "summit" to identify a place.
-Neck has, also, been used in England, since around 1555, to describe a narrow strip of land jutting out into the water, presumably because it resembled an animal's neck.
-Early American settlers seem to have seen the same animal's neck in a narrow stand of trees or a logged settlement on the edge of a woods. Hence, your "neck of the woods" was your home or neighborhood.
So here is the thread, if you have any cool expressions you use or that you've heard people use, put them up, and throw up a little history about it, whether it be a theory or an actual story of origin.
p.s. Make sure you lols while your doing it to cuz life it better when its lols.