Meanings
plural pains in the neck
- idiomaticslangSomeone or something which is annoying, irritating or inconvenient.
Got to know McTodd, found he wasn’t coming to the castle, and came down instead of him, same as me. Only he got there first, damn him! Wouldn’t that give you a pain in the neck!”
1923, P. G. Wodehouse, Leave It to Psmith, London, page 1881 more example
OK, call me a hypersensitive liberal, if you want. It wouldn’t be the first time. I can be a pain in the neck about racial, ethnic and religious bias sometimes, but I think it’s better to be hypersensitive than insensitive.
2022 November 19, Clarence Page, “Sometimes offensive comedy is just lazy laughs”, in Chicago TribuneSynonyms: pain in the ass, pain in the butt, pest, nuisance
Synonyms & antonyms
nounSomeone or something which is annoying, irritating or inconvenient.
More synonyms by meaning
nounsomething or someone that causes trouble; a source of unhappiness
Synonym sets from Open English WordNet, CC BY 4.0.
Origin
First attested in the 1920s.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
pain in the neck. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/pain%20in%20the%20neck
“pain in the neck.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/pain%20in%20the%20neck. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “pain in the neck,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/pain%20in%20the%20neck.
Source: pain in the neck on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.