dead from the neck up

Idioms  

1. Extremely stupid, as in That news commentator sounds dead from the neck up. This expression alludes to being “brain-dead.” [Early 1900s]

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Example Sentences

In "Heir to an Execution" I have Miriam Moskowitz, one of my characters, saying of that time period, "You have to be dead from the neck up not to feel radical, not to feel like a change is necessary."

From Salon

“My father would call me the laziest white kid he ever met. Then he would say I was ‘a meathead - dead from the neck up.’

From Washington Times

In The New Yorker, Richard Brody is similarly direct, albeit on the other side of the argument: “Anyone who needs ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ to explain that the stock-market fraud and personal irresponsibility it depicts are morally wrong is dead from the neck up; but anyone who can’t take vast pleasure in its depiction of delinquent behavior is dead from the neck down.”

From New York Times

A Summer for the Dead features a lusty gal who is rejected by a man dead from the waist down and settles for one who is only dead from the neck up�totally blind and nearly stone-deaf.

From Time Magazine Archive

The thing is already dead from the neck up.

From Time Magazine Archive