stick one's neck out

English

Verb

stick one's neck out (third-person singular simple present sticks one's neck out, present participle sticking one's neck out, simple past and past participle stuck one's neck out)

1. (idiomatic) To take a risk, putting oneself in a vulnerable position.
   • 1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter XVI, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, →OCLC:

     Uncle Tom's study was a place I seldom entered during my visits to Brinkley Court, because when I did go there he always grabbed me and started to talk about old silver, whereas if he caught me in the open he often touched on other topics, and the way I looked at it was that there was no sense in sticking one's neck out. It was more than a year since I had been inside this sanctum […]

   • 2014, David Bleiler, TLA Video & DVD Guide 2004: The Discerning Film Lover's Guide‎^[1], St. Martin's Griffin, →ISBN:

     Bogey is the cynical cafe owner who lives by his own moral code and sticks his neck out for “no one.”

   • 2021 January 27, Christian Wolmar, “Investment, not cuts, is how to generate a big 'return to rail'”, in RAIL, number 923, page 47:

     And unfortunately, while Secretary of State for Transport Grant Shapps (one of the few half-competent ministers in the Cabinet) is clever enough to understand this, he does not really care enough to stick his neck out, given that he is very likely to be heading off for a bigger job in the inevitable Cabinet reshuffle once the virus is under control.

Related terms

• wind one's neck in

Translations

putting oneself in a vulnerable position

• Finnish: vaarantaa itsensä
• French: se mouiller (fr), mouiller sa chemise (fr)
• Icelandic: gefa höggstað á sér
• Polish: nadstawiać karku impf, nadstawić karku pf
• Spanish: mojarse (es)

See also

• lead with one's chin
• out on a limb

References

• “stick one's neck out”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.