A: Could you arrange for someone else to fix Mr. Johnson’s car? He constantly watches me while I’m repairing it. Because he keeps breathing down my neck, I simply can’t concentrate on my work!

B: Sorry about that. I will pour him a cup of coffee and lead him away to the games room.

Note: Literally, this idiom means to “be physically close to someone so that the latter can feel the other person’s breaths blowing like tiny gusts of wind down their neck.” Being this close, of course, feels unnerving. Figuratively, the idiom can mean to “watch someone’s activities intently, usually in an overbearing and irritating way.” Oftentimes, parents, teachers and bosses get the most complaints for breathing down other people’s neck. But we also say: The project deadline is breathing down my neck. Here it means “approaching in a threatening manner.”