beauty of a woman's neck (2025)

Hi, Wordreference members.

What is the best description you usually use to refer to a woman of a beautiful neck:

- Her neck is as long as a giraffe's .
- Her neck is as long as a bottleneck.
- Her neck is as slender as a axe rod.

Thanks in advance.

Thanks, ewie, and it sounds good.

suzi br said:

You have made me smile with these, none of them sound very complimentary. If you are trying to conjure BEAUTY I would particularly avoid the giraffe image. but the connotations of bottle necks and axes are also very negative in general use, so they are unlikely to suggest beauty to your reader.

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If so, what is your suggestion then?

entangledbank said:

We had a queen called Edith Swan-neck, but that was a thousand years ago.

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It was also a misinterpreting of her Anglo-Saxon name, apparently (I learnt this morning). Still, it's the first beast that comes to my mind when I hear 'beautiful neck'.

entangledbank said:

Do you really say things like this in Arabic? I have tried all three out on a female colleague here, and examined her neck (from a safe distance) until she told me to stop it, but neither of us was able to think of anything that was suitable. Although I do like necks, it's not something that really gets compliments given to it these days. We had a queen called Edith Swan-neck, but that was a thousand years ago.

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No, we don't say so but I somewhere spotted on the Internet.

In Arabic, we usually describe the long neck of a woman by saying:
Her neck is as a fawn's. Also, the beautiness of the neck lies in the"longness"

I like suzi br's suggestion of referring to the beauty of a woman's neck as "an elegant neck."

Lark-lover, I believe that the real difficulty we're having with these metaphors is that there is perhaps a cultural difference in our perception of beauty. For Americans, Brits, and most of the Western World, we don't really uphold the length of one's neck as a highly praised beauty trait. In many other parts of the world, extremely long necks are highly praised. (I believe this is the case in some parts of Africa.) Secondly, we usually don't find metaphors connecting the beauty of humans with animal traits as being flattering.

I started to write rather extensively on other examples of cultural differences in our perception of beauty, but I erased it because that's probably a thread that belongs in the cultural division of the forum.

radosna said:

Hah! I find "The Simpsons" highly entertaining, but I'm not sure I'd want to direct our non-native English speakers to "The Simpsons" as trustworthy guide to English. At least not polite and proper English.

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Why not? I've heard of a lot of people who learn English from television shows--including cartoons. And "The Simpsons" offers many examples of modern spoken American English. Song lyrics, on the other hand...those are what English learners should deem untrustworthy.

Yes, watching televisions shows can be a very effective method of learning English (or any foreign language for that matter) -- including cartoons. I completely agree with that. I'm just making a small point that sometimes the humor and expressions can be crude and without a strong grasp of English, one might easily apply them to situations in which they might not be appropriate. I'm not talking about method. I'm talking about quality and standard of speech and that is something I believe WordReference Forum tries to uphold.

I think if we want to continue this, we'll have to start another thread. But I don't really think I have much more to add. As I said, it was just a small point. I'm not contrary to the show itself. As I said, I think it's entertaining. Nd it's not always crude. It's very clever in many ways. You, obviously are a huge fan.

Ok. I'm done with this thread.