a. (Stress variable.) [f. WRY a. 1. Cf. prec.]
1. Having a wry or crooked neck.
1596. Shaks., Merch. V., II. v. 30. The vile squealing of the wry-neckt Fife.
1842. Barham, Ingol. Leg., Ser. II. Netley Abbey. A squeaking fiddle and ‘wry-neck’d fife.’
1870. Engel, Catal. Mus. Instr., 62. The wry-necked Fife…. The Italians call it cornetto curvo.
2. Of persons or animals: Affected with distortion of the neck; having wryneck.
1608. Dekker, Dead Term, Wks. (Grosart), IV. 39. That aged and reuerend (but wry-necked) sonne of thine.
1653. [see WRY-MOUTHED a. 1].
a. 1679. J. Ward, Diary (1839), 273. Some are wry neckt from the womb.
1705. Hickeringill, Priest-cr., II. Pref. A 4. Great Alexander … (being blind) did love that Wry-neck’d Fool.
1753. Chambers’ Cycl., Suppl., Wry-Necked, a term applied to persons affected with a distortion of the neck.
1844. H. Stephens, Bk. Farm, II. 608. It is almost impossible to bring the head of a wry-necked lamb into the passage of the womb.
1860. Geo. Eliot, Mill on Fl., II. v. She preferred the wry-necked lambs.
fig. 1624. Heywood, Captives, III. iii. in Bullen, O. Pl., IV. This same wryneckt death … still spoyles all drinkinge, ’tis a thinge I never coold indure.
1647. N. Ward, Simple Cobler, 20. All the squint-ey’d, wry-necked, and brasen-faced Errors that are or ever were of that litter.
Hence Wry-neckedness. rare–1.
1881. Tait, in Nature, XXV. 90. The wry-neckedness of the protecting shell.
