neck and crop

Uncertain, but crop may refer to the backside of a horse, so that a horse that fell neck and crop had both its neck and backside hit the ground.

neck and crop (not comparable)

1. (dated) completely and with violence

   She turned him neck and crop out of the house.

   • 1919, W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence, chapter 41

     "She was a governess in the family of some Roman prince, and the son of the house seduced her. She thought he was going to marry her. They turned her out into the street neck and crop. She was going to have a baby, and she tried to commit suicide. Stroeve found her and married her."

   • 1917, Upton Sinclair, King Coal, chapter 12

     "In Peter Harrigan's mines! Don't you realise that he'll pick them up and throw them out of here, neck and crop--the whole crew, every man in the town, if necessary?"

   • 1938, Xavier Herbert, Capricornia, chapter II, p. 24,

     In the darkness he fell on him, dragged him to the back gate, and flung him out neck-and-crop.

• neck and heels

• come a cropper

• “Come a cropper” in Michael Quinion, Ballyhoo, Buckaroo, and Spuds: Ingenious Tales of Words and Their Origins, Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Books in association with Penguin Books, 2004, →ISBN.