Idiom: in my neck of the woods, AmE

Idiom: in my neck of the woods (AmE)
The meaning of this expression is: in the region where I live.

I once tried to find out how a word that referred to a part of the body could later develop into an expression where it meant region. I have just had a look at etymonline but there's nothing concrete about the origins of neck, except older variants that do not explain much.

As we have experts in etymology on EL&U, some of whom know exactly what is what, even in ProtoIndoEuropean, I thought I might ask if someone has read anything useful or has an idea that might explain this semantic change.

Added, June 19, 2015 Prompted by Jeff's encouraging post I found out Middle English spellings of the word edge and found interesting incidents in the Middle English Dictionary of the University of Michigan. See egge, also agge and neg, number 3. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/m/mec/med-idx?type=byte&byte=47498511&egdisplay=compact&egs=47512662

In 3a we find egge meaning edge of woods, and the ME form a wodeegge (wood-edge). Interesting also that beside the ME egge and the variant agge there is already a variant with n: neg. Unfortunately I'm not familiar with search functions of the MED, but it might be possible to find something like "in mine egge of the wode". Old English ecg means corner, edge, point.

Solution 1:

The OED says:

neck n. ... 7. b. orig. U.S. A narrow stretch of wood, pasture, ice, etc. Now usually in neck of the woods: a settlement in wooded country, or a small or remotely situated community; (hence more generally) a district, neighbourhood, or region. in this neck of the woods: in this vicinity, around here (also used elliptically). Formerly also †neck of timber.

Neck was originally productive in this sense: you could have a neck of land or a neck of marsh or whatever, for example:

1705   John Lowthrop Philosophical Transactions and Collections 414   the Principal parts of Port-Royal, now lie in 4, 6 or 8 Fathom Water. That part which is now ſtanding, is part of the End of that Neck of Land which runs into the Sea

1760   Anno Regni Triceſismo Tertio Georgii II. Regis 28   And whereas there is a certain Iſland, or Neck of Marſh, Meadow and Cripple-land, ſurrounded by Delaware River, Hollanders and Hay Creeks

1863   Robert Ballantyne Fast in the Ice 31   the lane of water along which they were steering was, just ahead of them, stopped by a neck of ice that connected two floe-pieces.

And of course, necks of wood:

1780   A. Young Tour Ireland (Dublin ed.) I. 266   You see three other necks of wood,..generally giving a deep shade.

which came to mean neighbourhood:

1871   M. Schele de Vere Americanisms 178   He will..find his neighborhood designated as a neck of the woods, that being the name applied to any settlement made in the well-wooded parts of the South-west especially.

and the original sense of neck was lost, leaving it fossilized in neck of the woods.

Solution 2:

Of course, the word neck can be transferred to things that have similar forms, so you can speak of the neck of a bottle. But "in my neck of the woods" simply means in that part/ region where I live.

And when I read such explanations as in Etymonline about a narrow strip of wood then I have the feeling I'm reading free and fanciful associations but not its etymology. Where in large wooded areas is there a narrow strip of wood? I think it would be more honest to say the origin of that curious saying is unknown.

That might lead perhaps to new ideas. I have the idea that there was something else behind "neck", and that word was changed to neck. It might be possible that the German word Ecke or Eck (corner) was the original word. "In my eck" or "in mine eck" might have been changed to "in my neck of the woods".

It is impossible to verify such transformations, but they are possible. Compare "Don't be fresh" transformed from German frech meaning insolent. Suddenly such curious transformations are in use and then theories are invented to explain the expression of neck.

If the origin of neck really had been the German word for corner then the saying really would make sense:

In my corner of the woods.

Solution 3:

When the US was wilderness, much travel was along the major and minor rivers. These often looped into bends, and a tight bend that almost met itself would form a neck-like figure that was often called a Neck on maps and documents.

The three Peninsulas of Virginia where rivers hit the Chesapeake Bay are all called Necks, the Northern Neck being the most famed as George Washington made his home there.

So you can see the image of you taking a canoe out into the wilderness where the speaker has put his little cabin near the river.