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cheek by jowl

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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WOTD – 26 March 2026

Etymology

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From cheek +‎ by +‎ jowl (“cheek; jaw”) (or possibly jowl (“fold of fatty flesh under the chin, around the cheeks, or lower jaw; cheek”)[1] or jowl (“(obsolete) head”)),[2][3] suggesting people so close to each other that the cheek of one person is next to the jowl of another.

Pronunciation

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Adverb

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cheek by jowl (comparative more cheek by jowl, superlative most cheek by jowl) (chiefly UK, idiomatic)

  1. In very close physical proximity; crowded together; side by side.
    Synonyms: alongside, (Scotland) cheek for chowl, elbow to elbow, shoulder-to-shoulder, tooth-to-jowl
  2. (figurative) In very close or intimate association.
    • 1929 September, Virginia Woolf, chapter VI, in A Room of One’s Own, uniform edition, London: Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, […], published 1931 (April 1935 printing), →OCLC, page 164:
      [B]ooks have a way of influencing each other. Fiction will be much the better for standing cheek by jowl with poetry and philosophy.
    • 2007, John Fabian Witt, “Elias Hill’s Exodus: Exit and Voice in the Reconstruction Nation”, in Patriots and Cosmopolitans: Hidden Histories of American Law, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, →ISBN, page 88:
      Exit and voice, social theorist Albert O[tto] Hirschman's famous dichotomous strategies, collided in the South Carolina countryside, where renewed commitment to the nation existed cheek by jowl with exit from it.

Usage notes

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  • The similar expression cheek to cheek implies a cosy, romantic situation, while cheek by jowl implies rather the opposite, being cramped or crowded.

Translations

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Adjective

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cheek by jowl (comparative more cheek by jowl, superlative most cheek by jowl)

  1. (chiefly UK, idiomatic) Often in the form cheek-by-jowl: in very close physical proximity; crowded together; tightly packed.
    Synonym: packed like sardines
    • 1663 (indicated as 1664), [Samuel Butler], “Canto I”, in Hudibras. The Second Part. […], London: […] T[homas] R[oycroft] for John Martyn, and James Allestry […], →OCLC, page 9:
      And 'tvvas not long, before ſhe found / Him, and his ſtout Squire, in the Pound; / Both coupled in Inchanted Tether, / By further leg behind together: / For as he ſate upon his Rump, / His head like one in doleful dump, / Betvveen his knees, his hands appli'd / Unto his ears on either ſide. / And by him, in another hole, / Afflicted Ralpho, cheek by Joul; […]
    • 1991, Robert C. Linthicum, “Our City as the Abode of Satanic Principalities and Powers”, in City of God, City of Satan: A Biblical Theology of the Urban Church, Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan Publishing House, →ISBN, part I (The City: Battleground), page 64:
      As we drove at breakneck speed through the streets, I could not help but be overwhelmed by the gaunt and desperate faces of the people, the endless squatter settlements of cheek-by-jowl, single-room shacks surrounded by ankle-deep mud, and the occasional glimpses of the rich apparently oblivious to the suffering around them.
    • 1997, Laurel Brake, “Writing, Cultural Production, and the Periodical Press in the Nineteenth Century”, in J. B. Bullen, editor, Writing and Victorianism‎[2], Harlow, Essex: Addison Wesley Longman, →ISBN, page 54:
      [T]he periodical press offers a pithy conspectus of the diversity of Victorian writing. For the magazine format, bringing together as it does a range of authors, topics and kinds of article into a single but serialized text, offers to twentieth-century readers a cheek by jowl structure which alerts us to the nuances of difference – categories of gender, genre, class, ideology, discourse – which allegedly more seamless texts are claimed to repress.
    • 2010, Manorama Mathai, chapter 27, in Love and Dr. Aiyar, [Bloomington, Ind.]: Xlibris, →ISBN, page 121:
      Books on etymology lay among Tamil poetry and volumes on religion were cheek by jowl with science fiction.
    • 2012, Roger Lovegrove, “San Blas Islands”, in Islands Beyond the Horizon: The Life of Twenty of the World’s Most Remote Places, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 62:
      The universal bohios (palm-leaved, thatched huts) are cheek by jowl with each other, right to the water's edge where they are often linked to each other by narrow planks across inlets and creeks.
    • 2014, Marlo Thomas, It Ain’t Over … till It’s Over: Reinventing Your Life—and Realizing Your Dreams—Anytime, at Any Age, New York, N.Y.: Atria Books, →ISBN, page 306:
      […] Diane […] turned down the road that ran alongside the river. It was sprinkled with houses, some dilapidated, some newer, some cheek by jowl, others sitting on wide parcels of land.

Alternative forms

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Translations

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See also

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References

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  1. ^ “jowl, n.2”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, March 2026; “jowl, n.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
  2. ^ “jowl | jole, n.3”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, December 2025.
  3. ^ “cheek by jowl, adv.”, in OED Online Paid subscription required⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, December 2025; “cheek by jowl, phrase”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

Further reading

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