> as lemmas

c1275 (?c1250) Owl & Nightingale (Calig.) (1935) 122 (MED) Worp hit ut mid þe alrewrste Þat his necke him to berste.

c1325 (c1300) Chron. Robert of Gloucester (Calig.) 7709 (MED) Richard..brec þere is nekke.

a1387 J. Trevisa tr. R. Higden Polychron. (St. John's Cambr.) (1879) VII. 21 (MED) Þat nyse abbot werþe wood..and brak his nekke and deide.

c1425 (c1400) Laud Troy-bk. 3665 (MED) Thei brak here neckis right onsunder.

a1470 T. Malory Morte Darthur (Winch. Coll. 13) (1990) II. 678 One of them his necke was nyghe brokyn in twayne.

1546 J. Heywood Dialogue Prouerbes Eng. Tongue i. x. sig. Eii In that house..A man shall as soone breake his neck as his fast.

a1616 W. Shakespeare As you like It (1623) i. i. 138 I had as liefe thou didst breake his necke as his finger. View more context for this quotation

1687 A. Lovell tr. J. de Thévenot Trav. into Levant ii. 74 One of the gang tumbled off of his Mule, and had almost broken his Neck.

1712 R. Steele Spectator No. 474. ¶2 The President must necessarily have broken his Neck.

1803 Med. & Physical Jrnl. 9 406 Turning it round, whereby the neck was dislocated.

1869 A. Trollope Phineas Finn xxx Mr Kennedy, when he was able to speak, declared that for a minute or two he had thought that his neck had been broken.

1945 P. G. Wodehouse Let. 27 Nov. in Yours, Plum (1990) 190 Nobody could be more anxious than myself..that Alan Alexander Milne should trip over a loose boot lace and break his bloody neck.

2001 Times 2 Jan. ii. 2/4 A haunting sense of being the lone parent of a child whose welfare would be seriously compromised if I were to fall off and break my neck.