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neck and crop love

neck and crop

Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adverb obsolete completely and with violence

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Uncertain, but crop may refer to the backside of a horse, so that a horse that fell neck and crop had both its neck and backside hit the ground.

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Examples

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cross-references (1)

Cross-references

  1. come a cropper

Comments

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  • Gammerstang commented on the word neck and crop

    (adverb) - The medieval English croppe and the Anglo-Saxon cropp both meant the top of a plant; the Old French croup meant the top of a hill. Thus, crop has come to mean the top of anything, including the ears of corn at the top of the stalk and the head of a man. The Norwegian nakk meant a knoll, or top of a hill. Thus neck and crop is simply a strengthening of the idea. To fall neck and crop is to crash completely. --Edwin Radford's Encyclopaedia of Phrases and Origins, 1945

    April 23, 2018