Word.ws English Dictionary

up to one's neck in alligators

up to one's neck in alligators phrase: extremely busy; having many pressing obligations, distractions, etc., consuming one's time.

Phrase

up to one's neck in alligators

  1. (idiomatic, slang) Extremely busy; having many pressing obligations, distractions, etc., consuming one's time.
    • For quotations using this term, see Citations:up to one's neck in alligators.

Origin of up to one's neck in alligators

An expressive image, derived from the proverb "when you're up to your neck in alligators, it's hard to remember that your initial objective was to drain the swamp".

Questions about up to one's neck in alligators

What does up to one's neck in alligators mean?
Up to one's neck in alligators means extremely busy; having many pressing obligations, distractions, etc., consuming one's time.
What part of speech is up to one's neck in alligators?
Up to one's neck in alligators is a phrase.

Words near up to one's neck in alligators in the dictionary

  1. up to one's elbows
  2. up to one's eyeballs
  3. up to one's eyebrows
  4. up to one's eyes
  5. up to one's neck
  6. up to one's neck in alligators
  7. up to one's old tricks
  8. up to par
  9. up to scratch
  10. up to snuff
  11. up to something

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: up to one's neck in alligators (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: “up to one's neck in alligators.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/up_to_one%27s_neck_in_alligators. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.