snout
/snaʊt
/- They have a pointed snout, and the mouth contains teeth.
- All tapirs have a short, fleshy proboscis formed by the snout and upper lips.
- Beneath the projecting snout there is a small, toothless mouth with thick, sucking lips.
Synonyms
- And the kitchen door opened and May stuck her snout into the room again.
- But we should not be sticking our snout in there.
- After trailing the champions throughout, it seemed that all Cork needed was to get their snouts in front, but after drawing up alongside their opponents as the game swung in to the final five minutes Cork couldn't eke out a lead.
- The crew works until 9 p.m. and all day Saturday repairing the front snout, rear clip and right flame rails.
- Kathleen stared at the pistol, which he held, that had a cloud of smoke whispering from its snout, then she averted her eyes to the fallen officer.
- This area can also be taken up by the bus's snout, leaving the cyclist little option but form a ‘snake’ alongside.
- The opprobrium that once attached to informers, snitches, snouts, shoppers and narks in all walks of life no longer exists.
- Most believe that, as a police snout, he set them up for lengthy jail sentences.
- Apparently, a third of calls to the cheatline relate to household insurance, with snouts telling tales about burglaries that never happened or fires started by ‘accident’.
- Hypsena and other genera, family Noctuidae, in particular the snout (H. proboscidalis).
Derivatives
snouted
- Well, I for one was not going to pass up the opportunity to explore and indeed research the most fascinating facts I could find about this pointy snouted insect snorting cutey.
- They are still small short legged and long snouted.
- Long snouted raccoons tamely hang out among the crowd.
snouty
- Beast, 2005, a snouty, projecting recent wall-piece, was among the most sculptural works on view, with the laboriously reconfigured branches completely subsumed by a singular, arresting form.
- What he demands is an education that ‘makes] [him] a sharp, snouty, rooting hog.’
- Its snouty head, patchy grey body and small pedal fins make the dwarf look more like a large dolphin than a baleen whale.
Origin
Middle English: from Middle Dutch, Middle Low German snūt; related to snot.
Think how many words to do with noses begin with the letters sn-. Most are medieval. There is snout, which in early use could describe not only the projecting part of an animal's face but also an elephant's trunk, and a bird's beak. A variant of snout was snoot (mid 19th century), which is where snooty (early 20th century) comes from—snooty people have their noses stuck in the air. Snot (Late Middle English) and snotty (late 16th century) are also based on snout. Snuff (early 16th century) used to mean ‘to inhale through the nostrils’ before it became a term for powdered tobacco that you inhale through your nostrils. Snuffle (late 16th century) is related. Snivel (Middle English) originally referred to mucus. Snore (Middle English) and snort (Late Middle English) once had each other's meanings—snore meant ‘a snort’ and snort meant ‘to snore’, and both probably imitated the sound.