rubberneck means someone who engages in rubbernecking, or turning and staring. Lexicurio rates it Rare gem — a strength score of 83 out of 100.
Why this word is great
RUBBERNECK — [Noun/Verb] One who cranes the head to stare, especially at an accident or spectacle, or the act of doing so. From the English words rubber (suggesting flexibility) + neck, coined in the late 19th century U.S. to describe a tourist or gawker. Unlike "gawk," which implies a slack-jawed, dull insensitivity, or "sightsee," a neutral itinerary of approved attractions, rubbernecking is the hydraulic motion of curiosity divorced from context. It is the concert of brake lights on the opposite highway, the synchronized swivel of heads in a passing train toward police lights, the collective tilt from a tour bus at a ruin that is merely someone else’s present disaster—a physical confession that our deepest attention is held by the shared theatres of disruption we witness but dare not join.
noun
- Someone who engages in rubbernecking, or turning and staring.“We must have looked gorgeous. And what made it worse, there was at least a hundred rubbernecks that didn't have anything better to do than stand around and watch everyone falling all over themselves.”
- A tourist.
- Someone or something with a flexible neck.“A suitable washer B1 and rubberneck B2, both of well known description, are provided to form with clapper arm B3 a watertight joint...”
verb
- To watch by craning the neck (as though it were made of rubber), especially if the observer and observed are in motion relative to each other.“The driver was so busy rubbernecking, trying to get a good view of the accident, that he was almost part of another accident.”
- To cause (someone) to watch in fascinated horror, as if rubbernecking to see a roadside accident.“Hoover’s books go down like a T.M.I. Facebook confessional, rubbernecking you in from the first sentence. Certain patterns quickly emerge.”