nose out
verb
Simple meaning
To find using one's sense of smell.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
nohzowtSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈnoʊˈzaʊt
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
verb
transitiveinformal
To find using one's sense of smell.
transitiveinformalfiguratively
To find by searching.
transitiveinformal
To defeat by a small margin.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: To find using one's sense of smell.
Used this way, nose out is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in everyday conversation and social media or informal writing contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Casual
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Playful
- Usage feel
- Casual and conversational
Where it naturally appears
- Everyday conversation
- Social media/informal writing
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.