Word.ws English Dictionary

neck verse

neck verse noun: the verse formerly read to entitle a party to the benefit of clergy, said to be the first verse of the fifty-first Psalm, "Miserere mei," etc.

Noun

neck verse (plural neck verses)

  1. The verse formerly read to entitle a party to the benefit of clergy, said to be the first verse of the fifty-first Psalm, "Miserere mei," etc.
    • I haue ſeene a pardon giuen to a man vpon the gallovves, but vvho ſo emboldeneth himſelfe thereuypon, perhaps the rope may be his hire: it is not good to put it vpon the Pſalme of Miſerere, and the neck-verſe, for ſometime he prooues no clarke.1619, Samuell Hieron, “The Worth of the Water of Life. Dauids Longing, and Dauids Loue. The Good Fight. [II. Tim[othy] 4. 7.]”, in The Sermons of Master Samuell Hieron, […], London: […] Iohn Beale...
    • Letter or line know I never a one,
      Were't my neck-verse at Hairibee1805, Walter Scott, “(please specify the page)”, in The Lay of the Last Minstrel: A Poem, London: […] [James Ballantyne] for Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, […], and A[rchibald] Constable and Co....
  2. (broadly) A verse or saying, the utterance of which decides one's fate; a shibboleth.
    • These words, "bread and cheese," were their neck verse or shibboleth to distinguish them; all pronouncing "broad and cause," being presently put to death.1655, Thomas Fuller, The Church-history of Britain; […], London: […] Iohn Williams […], →OCLC, (please specify |book=I to XI)

Forms of neck verse

pluralneck verses

Questions about neck verse

What does neck verse mean?
Neck verse means the verse formerly read to entitle a party to the benefit of clergy, said to be the first verse of the fifty-first Psalm, "Miserere mei," etc.
What part of speech is neck verse?
Neck verse is a noun.
What is the plural of neck verse?
The plural of neck verse is neck verses.

Words near neck verse in the dictionary

  1. neck rule
  2. neck sweetbread
  3. neck sweetbreads
  4. neck tie
  5. neck up
  6. neck verse
  7. neck verses
  8. neck yoke
  9. neck yokes
  10. neck-and-neck
  11. neck-brace

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: neck verse (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.

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Cite this entry: “neck verse.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/neck_verse. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.