wry-necked
Americanadjective
Etymology
Origin of wry-necked
First recorded in 1590–1600
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Six months later there limped out of Chihuahua hospital a discharged patient, wry-necked, crook-backed, with drawn features, and hair and beard streaked with gray.
From The Round-Up A romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama by Edmund Day
This table was set out with wry-necked gourds; deformities of calabashes; and shapeless trenchers, dug out of knotty woods.
From Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II by Herman Melville
"I can only see under me; I am wry-necked; my head hangs down; my appearance is so droll, that if people laugh, I shall not complain."
From Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 by Isaac Disraeli
"Hear you me, Jessica," says Shylock to his daughter, "lock up my doors; and when you hear the drum, and the vile squeaking of the wry-necked fife, clamber not you up into the casements then."
From Practical Education, Volume II by Maria Edgeworth
The tiller was a wry-necked, elbowed bough, thrusting itself through the deck, as if the tree itself was fast rooted in the hold.
From Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I by Herman Melville
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
