A Twitter beef between Kanye West and Wiz Khalifa has a listener wondering about the phrase talk out the side of one’s neck, meaning to “talk trash about someone.” It’s simply a variation of talking out of the side of one’s mouth. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Talk Out the Side of Your Neck”
Hi, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Lexi Kirby, and I’m calling from Denver, Colorado.
Hi, Lexi. Welcome to the show.
What’s up? What can we do for you?
So I actually had a question about something I saw on Twitter the other day. I was reading the tweets between Wiz Khalifa and Kanye West, and one of them said something about talking out the side of their neck at someone. And I used to be a substitute teacher in Waco, Texas, and I heard my kids say this a lot, but I never knew what it meant. I knew it wasn’t a good thing, but I wasn’t entirely sure what it meant.
So this beef between Wiz Khalifa and Kanye West is pretty rancorous, if I remember, right?
Yes, yeah, they weren’t happy.
Yeah, for those of us who aren’t following their feud, what was up with that?
I guess one had accused the other of not being totally true to the music they said they were making, and then it just got very personal and ugly very quickly.
Oh, okay.
Okay, and so one of them accused the other of talking out of the side of their neck?
Yes, talking out the side of your neck. When your kids used it in class, first, what age were they? And second, what do you think they meant?
They were usually in high school, and it usually was when they were fighting with each other. One of them would say, like, quit talking out the side of your neck at me or something like that. Kind of like, you know, say it to my face. I don’t know if that’s what they meant. It sounded similar to that.
Any chance that they were African-American kids?
Yes, a lot of them in Waco are.
Okay.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. This is a historically African-American term. It goes back at least to the 1970s, probably much older. And it’s a variation on talking out the side of your mouth, which is to say something that you can’t back up, almost to kind of gossip in the face of someone, to say a little like gaslighting where you’re telling lies and trying to act as if a certain kind of thing are true and there’s no evidence that it’s true at all. But it’s generally about talking trash about another person.
But at the side of your neck.
Yeah, it’s just a variation on mouth.
Right, it’s like it got moved down.
Yeah, it’s an odd phrasing for sure, but it’s basically the same. We’ve got quotes from 1975. One slang dictionary glosses it as to speak foolishly, but that’s really broad. Usually there’s a great deal of distrust there of what is said. It’s a lie, maybe a lie that can’t be proven or a lie that is difficult to refute, which is the worst kind of lie.
Right. That makes sense.
Well, that’s a new one on me.
Yeah. Yeah. So at least 40 years of history on this, but probably much more than that.
Lexi, thanks a bunch for calling.
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me on.
Take care now.
Take care. Bye-bye.
Bye.
If you’ve got a call about language, 877-929-9673. Email words@waywordradio.org or ask your questions on Twitter or make your comments @wayword.
This expression also exists in Dutch as “uit zijn nek kletsen” or “uit zijn nek praten” and it originates from phrenology. Phrenology was a science from the beginning of the 19th century that investigated the relation between a person’s brain and mental capacity. One of the methods was to measure skulls and link certain shapes with certain skills and characteristics.
This science had big impact on the 19th century society starting in the academic world and later also in the other sections of society. This resulted in expressions such as “to talk out of your neck” (talking nonsense) and other Dutch words such as “talenknobbel” which stands for a head for languages but it literally means “language lump or language knob”. It was believed that the language lump was above the eye. In Dutch the word “knobbel” referring to a lump or knob in the brain is used to refer to intellectual abilities including maths, science, etc.