brass neck
brass neck noun: gall, shamelessness, cheek.
Noun
brass neck (plural brass necks)
- Gall, shamelessness, cheek.
- This year's commemorations of the start of World War One are a stark reminder of the sacrifices politicians make with other people's lives – except nowadays they'll do so wearing a Help for Heroes t-shirt (almost entirely covering their brass necks). When it comes to the hypocritical lauding of the...2014 March 18, John Hyde, “Help for Heroes? Not from this government”, in The Law Society Gazette, archived from the original on 20 Mar 2014
- That’s why it’s particularly outrageous for the government to sneak out its rubbish “blueprint” for cycling and walking on Easter Sunday, and having the brass neck to try to spin its laughably small investment in cycling and walking as a genuine attempt to make them people’s choice for shorter...2016 March 27, Helen Pidd, “Government's laughable cycling blueprint does nothing to boost safety”, in The Guardian
- A person with gall.
- And it will need a strong hand to wield that knife, and it will need a steady nerve besides, because they have necks of brass, these aristocrats, I tell you: brass necks, all of them!2010 [2006], Robert Harris, Imperium (Cicero Trilogy), Random House, →ISBN, page 72
- Mostly, though, open data acts as a deterrent against committing fraud in the first place, since it would take the brassiest of brass necks to post a fake dataset on a public website.2020, Stuart Ritchie, Science Fictions: Exposing Fraud, Bias, Negligence and Hype in Science, Random House, →ISBN
Examples of brass neck in a sentence
- Theresa May’s former chief of staff has accused the UK’s chief Brexit negotiator, David Frost, of having a “brass neck” after he said the UK government had “blinked first” in negotiations.2020 September 6, Jessica Elgot, “UK's chief Brexit negotiator has 'brass neck', says former May aide”, in The Guardian:
- After the Conservatives’ economic failure left working people worse off, it takes some real brass neck for the Tory top team to tell the public that it’s really all their fault.2025 January 31, Rowena Mason, quoting Labour spokesperson, “Tory Chris Philp accused of ‘brass neck’ after saying UK needs better work...
Forms of brass neck
| plural | brass necks |
|---|
Origin of brass neck
From stick one's neck out.
Questions about brass neck
- What does brass neck mean?
- Brass neck means gall, shamelessness, cheek.
- How do you use brass neck in a sentence?
- Theresa May’s former chief of staff has accused the UK’s chief Brexit negotiator, David Frost, of having a “brass neck” after he said the UK government had “blinked first” in negotiations.
- What part of speech is brass neck?
- Brass neck is a noun.
- What is the plural of brass neck?
- The plural of brass neck is brass necks.
Words near brass neck in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: brass neck (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-brass neck.ogg.
Cite this entry: “brass neck.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/brass_neck. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.