The neck is the part of your body that connects your head to your shoulders and torso. Inside your neck are crucial pathways: your spinal cord (which carries signals between your brain and body), your windpipe (which carries air to your lungs), your esophagus (which carries food to your stomach), and major blood vessels. Because so much important anatomy passes through such a narrow space, the neck is both essential and vulnerable.

The word appears in many expressions that reveal how people think about this body part. When two competitors are neck and neck in a race, they're running so close together that their necks are nearly side by side. If you stick your neck out, you're taking a risk, like a turtle extending its head from its protective shell. A pain in the neck describes someone or something extremely annoying. When someone gets angry or tense, you might notice the muscles in their neck tightening or the veins becoming more visible.

The word also describes narrow connecting parts on objects. A bottle has a neck where it narrows near the top. A guitar has a neck where the strings run along the fingerboard. Even a narrow strip of land can be called a neck if it connects two larger areas.