Idiom
neck and neck
Meaning
Very close in progress, as in a race or a contest.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“The two runners are neck and neck near the finish line.”
“The two chess players are neck and neck as the clock runs out.”
“The two candidates are neck and neck in the polls, so the final debate will likely decide the election.”
“Both companies are neck and neck to release their new smartphone first, so the engineers are working overtime this weekend.”
“Throughout the final quarter of the championship game, the rival teams remained neck and neck, neither willing to concede an inch of ground to the other.”
Examples
simple
“The two runners are neck and neck near the finish line.”
“The two chess players are neck and neck as the clock runs out.”
contextual
“The two candidates are neck and neck in the polls, so the final debate will likely decide the election.”
“Both companies are neck and neck to release their new smartphone first, so the engineers are working overtime this weekend.”
complex
“Throughout the final quarter of the championship game, the rival teams remained neck and neck, neither willing to concede an inch of ground to the other.”
Origin
Derived from the imagery of 19th-century horse racing, the term describes two or more competitors so evenly matched that their necks appear side-by-side as they approach the finish. The phrasing was firmly established in English sporting terminology by the 1830s to denote a race resulting in, or heading toward, a dead heat. The visual requirement for the idiom is literal; the horses must be sufficiently abreast that their relative positions cannot be distinguished by their anatomical extension.
Key words
Related idioms
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