Idiom
neck of the woods
Meaning
A local neighbourhood or region.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“It is nice to see you in this neck of the woods.”
“I did not know you lived nearby, so I was surprised to see you in my neck of the woods.”
“After years of traveling abroad, he finally returned to his old neck of the woods to settle down and reconnect with his family.”
Examples
simple
“It is nice to see you in this neck of the woods.”
contextual
“I did not know you lived nearby, so I was surprised to see you in my neck of the woods.”
complex
“After years of traveling abroad, he finally returned to his old neck of the woods to settle down and reconnect with his family.”
Origin
The phrase derives from the use of neck to denote a narrow tract of land, or perhaps from the Algonquian *naiack*, signifying a point or corner. While the former suggests a topographical extension of the anatomy, the latter traces the idiom to an indigenous designation for a specific geographic bend.
Key words
Related idioms
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