etymology - Idiom: in my neck of the woods, AmE


Idiom: in my neck of the woods (AmE)
The meaning of this expression is: in the region where I live.


I once tried to find out how a word that referred to a part of the body could later develop into an expression where it meant region. I have just had a look at etymonline but there's nothing concrete about the origins of neck, except older variants that do not explain much.


As we have experts in etymology on EL&U, some of whom know exactly what is what, even in ProtoIndoEuropean, I thought I might ask if someone has read anything useful or has an idea that might explain this semantic change.



Added, June 19, 2015 Prompted by Jeff's encouraging post I found out Middle English spellings of the word edge and found interesting incidents in the Middle English Dictionary of the University of Michigan. See egge, also agge and neg, number 3. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/m/mec/med-idx?type=byte&byte=47498511&egdisplay=compact&egs=47512662


In 3a we find egge meaning edge of woods, and the ME form a wodeegge (wood-edge). Interesting also that beside the ME egge and the variant agge there is already a variant with n: neg. Unfortunately I'm not familiar with search functions of the MED, but it might be possible to find something like "in mine egge of the wode". Old English ecg means corner, edge, point.



Answer



"Neck' might derive from 'neuk' meaning corner in British usage, especially in Scotland.


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