brass neck

brass neck

See also: brass-neck

English

Etymology

From stick one's neck out.[1]

Pronunciation

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Noun

brass neck (plural brass necks)

1. (idiomatic, UK, Ireland) Gall, shamelessness, cheek.
   • 2014 March 18, John Hyde, “Help for Heroes? Not from this government”, in The Law Society Gazette‎, archived from the original on 20 March 2014:

     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 armed forces while simultaneously shafting them, no one does it better than this government.

   • 2016 March 27, Helen Pidd, “Government's laughable cycling blueprint does nothing to boost safety”, in The Guardian‎:

     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 journeys and to reduce the rate of cyclists killed or seriously injured.

   • 2020 September 6, Jessica Elgot, “UK's chief Brexit negotiator has 'brass neck', says former May aide”, in The Guardian‎:

     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.

2. (idiomatic, UK, Ireland) A person with gall.
   • 2010 [2006], Robert Harris, Imperium (Cicero Trilogy), Random House, →ISBN, page 72:

     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!

   • 2020, Stuart Ritchie, Science Fictions: Exposing Fraud, Bias, Negligence and Hype in Science‎, Random House, →ISBN:

     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.

Related terms

• brass-balled
• brass-necked
• brass-neck (verb)
• [to have] a neck like a jockey's bollocks (Irish slang)

References

1. Jonathon Green (2023), “brass neck”, in Green's Dictionary of Slang