A Lesson in Universal Language

As a writer from Greater Manchester, I'm always looking to inject local flavour into my prose. Sometimes, though, I hesitate, worried that a phrase I grew up with might be too much of a regional colloquialism—a true "Mancunian-ism" that would stop a reader from, say, Texas or Australia in their tracks.

That was my exact fear when I posted a single sentence on Threads and asked for feedback:

"The crick in his neck complained at him as he tried to sit up and reach for the phone."

I have always thought that the word "crick" - a word I've used since childhood to describe a sharp, nagging muscle spasm that only occurs in my neck was firmly rooted in North West England. I braced myself for comments suggesting a more standard term like "stiff neck" or "spasm." And I got a small number of these.

However, the responses I got, and am still getting as I write this, are/were astonishing.

The feedback is overwhelmingly clear: "crick in the neck" is understood globally. Replies have poured in from around the world. I'm honestly struggling to keep up, and I'm determined to read every one of them. Replies from the US, Canada, Australia, and across the UK all confirm that this was a perfectly clear and universally evocative term.