Schnozz

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /ʃnɒz/

Definitions

1. A particularly large or distinctive nose can be described vividly
2. The term refers to a nose that is especially well-defined or noticeably big
3. An informal term for a nose that is unusually large or stands out noticeably

Etymology: The most striking thing about "schnozz" is that its nose-sense is tied to the American slang of the 1940s, when it seems to have become a fixture of comic nicknames and performers' jokes. Its probable source is Yiddish "shnoyts," which likely passed into English through the speech of New York's Yiddish-speaking communities. The Yiddish word is cognate with German "Schnauze," meaning snout or muzzle, so the two languages preserve a shared Germanic ancestry for this sense of a protruding face. English has another relative of the same family in "snout," a doublet of "schnozz" that came into English through a separate route, so the two words are cousins rather than borrowings of one another. Speakers also sometimes link "schnozz" to "schnozzle," a related form with the same playful, enlarged-nose meaning. A less common theory treats the word as a variant of "nose" shaped by the Yiddish "schm-" sound pattern or by general associations with Yiddish words, but the Yiddish origin remains the more likely explanation.

Synonyms: nose, snout