a millstone around (one's) neck

a millstone around (one's) neck

An extremely difficult or disadvantageous burden or hindrance. I wish I hadn't bought that house—the mortgage is a millstone around my neck. Given the advisor's laundry list of scandals, he's proving to be quite a millstone around the candidate's neck. Supply-chain problems can be a real millstone around your neck when you work in the manufacturing sector.

See also: around, millstone, neck

Farlex Dictionary of Idioms. © 2022 Farlex, Inc, all rights reserved.

millstone around one's neck

A heavy burden, as in Julie finds Grandma, who is crabby, a millstone around her neck. The literal hanging of a millstone about the neck is mentioned as a punishment in the New Testament (Matthew 18:6), causing the miscreant to be drowned. Its present figurative use was first recorded in a history of the Quakers (c. 1720).

See also: around, millstone, neck

The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer. Copyright © 2003, 1997 by The Christine Ammer 1992 Trust. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

a millstone around your neck

BRITISH, AMERICAN or

a millstone round your neck

BRITISH

COMMON If something is a millstone around your neck or a millstone round your neck, it is a very unpleasant problem or responsibility that you cannot escape from. The country's inefficient telephone company has been a millstone round the government's neck. Long-term illness can make you feel like a millstone around your family's necks. Note: Millstone is often used on its own with this meaning. There is the continuing millstone of the country's enormous foreign debt. Note: A millstone is one of a pair of very heavy round flat stones which are used to grind grain. Jesus referred to children in Matthew 18:5 by saying, `Whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.'

See also: around, millstone, neck

Collins COBUILD Idioms Dictionary, 3rd ed. © HarperCollins Publishers 2012

a millstone round your neck

a very severe impediment or disadvantage.

A millstone was a large circular stone used to grind corn. The phrase alludes to a method of executing people by throwing them into deep water with a heavy stone attached to them, a fate believed to have been suffered by several early Christian martyrs.

See also: millstone, neck, round

Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary © Farlex 2017

a millstone around/round somebody’s ˈneck

something which limits your freedom or makes you worry: My debts are a millstone round my neck.A millstone is a very large heavy flat stone used to crush grain to make flour. This phrase refers to an old form of punishing people by tying a heavy stone around their necks and dropping them into deep water to drown.

See also: around, millstone, neck, round

Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary © Farlex 2017