Word.ws English Dictionary

neck or nothing

neck or nothing adverb: at all costs.

Adverb

neck or nothing (not comparable)

  1. (dated) at all costs.

Adjective

neck or nothing (not comparable)

  1. (dated) do or die.
    • It is a neck-or-nothing venture to wrest valuable merchandise traffic from road transport.1960 January, G. Freeman Allen, “"Condor"—British Railways' fastest freight train”, in Trains Illustrated, page 45

Forms of neck or nothing

alternative formnick or nothing

Origin of neck or nothing

Originally a steeplechase phrase; to win by a neck or to be nowhere—i.e. not counted at all because unworthy of notice.

Questions about neck or nothing

What does neck or nothing mean?
Neck or nothing means at all costs.
What part of speech is neck or nothing?
Neck or nothing can be an adverb or an adjective.

Words near neck or nothing in the dictionary

  1. neck knife
  2. neck knives
  3. neck of the woods
  4. neck oil
  5. neck on neck
  6. neck or nothing
  7. neck pad
  8. neck pads
  9. neck pillow
  10. neck pillows
  11. neck plate

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: neck or nothing (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:

Cite this entry: “neck or nothing.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/neck_or_nothing. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.