Definition of "cheek by jowl"
cheek by jowl
adverb
comparative more cheek by jowl, superlative most cheek by jowl
In very close physical proximity; crowded together; side by side.
Quotations
[T]heir Churches ſtand vvide open early and late, inviting as it vvere all comers, […] the Cobler vvill kneel vvith the Count; and the Laundreſs gig by goll vvith her Lady, there being no Pevvs there to cauſe pride and envy, contentions and quarrels vvhich are ſo rife in our Churches.
1655, James Howell, “XXXVI. To J. Anderson, Esq”, in Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ. Familiar Letters Domestic and Forren. […], 3rd edition, volume IV, London: […] Humphrey Mos[e]ley, […], section VI, page 483
A Sheep-hook then, with Patch his Dog, / And Tar-box by his side; / He with his Master, jig by jowl, / Unto old Gillian hy'd.
1719, Thomas d’Urfey, compiler, “The King and Shepherd, and Gillian the Shepherd’s Wife, with Her Churlish Answer to the King”, in Songs Compleat, Pleasant and Divertive; […], volume V, London: […] W. Pearson, for J[acob] Tonson, […], published 19th century, page 293
[…] I believe I crammed them [two petitions] baith into his hand cheek by jowl, and maybe my ain was boonmost; […] […] I believe I crammed them both into his hand cheek by jowl, and maybe my own was uppermost; […]
1822 May 29, [Walter Scott], chapter III, in The Fortunes of Nigel. […], volume I (in English), Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne and Co.] for Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co., page 94
We shared the long hours, the often rough seas, the successes and the disappointments in a close companionship with the captains and crews of the Italian boats and also with the little clique of fishermen whose small draggers were moored cheek by jowl with us in Annisquam Harbor.
2008, Kitty Crockett Robertson, “Kelpie”, in Measuring Time—by an Hourglass, Indianapolis, Ind.: Dog Ear Publishing, page 140
[H]e [David Free] had made his peace with the idea of spending half-term cheek-by-jowl on a cruise ship with the world's biggest Titanic enthusiasts.
2012 April 8, Helen Pidd, “The Titanic memorial cruise – ‘not a re-enactment’”, in Alan Rusbridger, editor, The Guardian, London: Guardian News & Media, archived from the original on 11 November 2022
(figurative) In very close or intimate association.
Quotations
[B]ooks have a way of influencing each other. Fiction will be much the better for standing cheek by jowl with poetry and philosophy.
1929 September, Virginia Woolf, chapter VI, in A Room of One’s Own, uniform edition, London: Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, […], published 1931 (April 1935 printing), page 164
Exit and voice, social theorist Albert O[tto] Hirschman's famous dichotomous strategies, collided in the South Carolina countryside, where renewed commitment to the nation existed cheek by jowl with exit from it.
2007, John Fabian Witt, “Elias Hill’s Exodus: Exit and Voice in the Reconstruction Nation”, in Patriots and Cosmopolitans: Hidden Histories of American Law, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, page 88
adjective
comparative more cheek by jowl, superlative most cheek by jowl
(chiefly UK, idiomatic) Often in the form cheek-by-jowl: in very close physical proximity; crowded together; tightly packed.
Quotations
And 'tvvas not long, before ſhe found / Him, and his ſtout Squire, in the Pound; / Both coupled in Inchanted Tether, / By further leg behind together: / For as he ſate upon his Rump, / His head like one in doleful dump, / Betvveen his knees, his hands appli'd / Unto his ears on either ſide. / And by him, in another hole, / Afflicted Ralpho, cheek by Joul; […]
1663 (indicated as 1664), [Samuel Butler], “Canto I”, in Hudibras. The Second Part. […], London: […] T[homas] R[oycroft] for John Martyn, and James Allestry […], page 9
As we drove at breakneck speed through the streets, I could not help but be overwhelmed by the gaunt and desperate faces of the people, the endless squatter settlements of cheek-by-jowl, single-room shacks surrounded by ankle-deep mud, and the occasional glimpses of the rich apparently oblivious to the suffering around them.
1991, Robert C. Linthicum, “Our City as the Abode of Satanic Principalities and Powers”, in City of God, City of Satan: A Biblical Theology of the Urban Church, Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan Publishing House, part I (The City: Battleground), page 64
[T]he periodical press offers a pithy conspectus of the diversity of Victorian writing. For the magazine format, bringing together as it does a range of authors, topics and kinds of article into a single but serialized text, offers to twentieth-century readers a cheek by jowl structure which alerts us to the nuances of difference – categories of gender, genre, class, ideology, discourse – which allegedly more seamless texts are claimed to repress.
1997, Laurel Brake, “Writing, Cultural Production, and the Periodical Press in the Nineteenth Century”, in J. B. Bullen, editor, Writing and Victorianism, Harlow, Essex: Addison Wesley Longman, page 54
The universal bohios (palm-leaved, thatched huts) are cheek by jowl with each other, right to the water's edge where they are often linked to each other by narrow planks across inlets and creeks.
2012, Roger Lovegrove, “San Blas Islands”, in Islands Beyond the Horizon: The Life of Twenty of the World’s Most Remote Places, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, page 62
[…] Diane […] turned down the road that ran alongside the river. It was sprinkled with houses, some dilapidated, some newer, some cheek by jowl, others sitting on wide parcels of land.
2014, Marlo Thomas, It Ain’t Over … till It’s Over: Reinventing Your Life—and Realizing Your Dreams—Anytime, at Any Age, New York, N.Y.: Atria Books, page 306