Meaning of neck verse | Babel Free

Definitions

1. The verse formerly read to entitle a party to the benefit of clergy, said to be the first verse of the fifty-first Psalm, "Miserere mei," etc.
2. A verse or saying, the utterance of which decides one's fate; a shibboleth.
   broadly

Examples

“I haue ſeene a pardon giuen to a man vpon the gallovves, but vvho ſo emboldeneth himſelfe thereuypon, perhaps the rope may be his hire: it is not good to put it vpon the Pſalme of Miſerere, and the neck-verſe, for ſometime he prooues no clarke.”

“Letter or line know I never a one, Were't my neck-verse at Hairibee”

“For having learned to read, but never to write, beyond, that is, the trifle of her maiden name, she valued scholarship both by that she had, and that she had not; and in the year after I was breeched, prevailed on my father who, for his part, good man, never advanced beyond the Neck Verse, to bind me to the ancient Grammar School at Bishop's Stortford, then kept by a Mr. G----.”

“These words, "bread and cheese," were their neck verse or shibboleth to distinguish them; all pronouncing "broad and cause," being presently put to death.”

CEFR level