fall on someone's neck

English

Pronunciation

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Verb

fall on someone's neck (third-person singular simple present falls on someone's neck, present participle falling on someone's neck, simple past fell on someone's neck, past participle fallen on someone's neck)

1. (dated, idiomatic) To embrace someone affectionately or thankfully.
   • 1856, Charles Kingsley, The Heroes, Story III: Theseus:

     [W]hen Theseus saw him, his heart leapt into his mouth, and he longed to fall on his neck and welcome him.

   • 1910, William MacLeod Raine, chapter 15, in Bucky O'Connor:

     If he expected either of them to fall on his neck and weep tears of gratitude at his pompous announcement, the colonel was disappointed.

   • 1920, Harold MacGrath, chapter 24, in The Drums Of Jeopardy:

     I ought to fall on your neck with joy. . . . You are my father's friend, my mother's, mine.

   • 1990 March 18, Anne Tyler, “Review of Collected Stories of Wallace Stegner”, in New York Times, retrieved 14 May 2015:

     "[T]he moment your delinquent showed the slightest sign of decency . . . you fell on his neck as if he had rescued you from drowning."

   • 2012, Karen Templeton, chapter 25, in Hanging by a Thread, →ISBN:

     [A]fter falling on my neck and hugging me and calling me “cousin” like a character from a Jane Austen novel, . . . she sat me down.

Translations

to embrace someone affectionately or thankfully

• Finnish: heittäytyä syliin
• French: sauter au cou (fr)
• Polish: obejmować serdecznie impf, objąć serdecznie pf