"Some Cynical Guy" No. 66: March 15, 2002

The Sniffling Snout

Because the gods saw fit to give me an imposing nose, they must snicker all the more merrily when I come down with a cold. There's something about an oversized snozzle that inspires universal mirth, particularly among boys, and I've endured years of mostly good-natured abuse on its account. (A childhood friend used to call my nose by a pet name: Hubert. A former college roommate I hadn't seen in thirty years checked my profile before he could make a positive identification.) 

The fact is that I've never been ashamed of my plus-size proboscis. It gives the appearance of a majestic promontory, even a minor Alp -- and it links me to other great-nosed men of history: Dante, Napoleon, Washington, Lincoln, Danny Thomas. Call it the brotherhood of the snout. But I'm inclined to believe that a well-nosed individual with a headcold suffers more gravely and earnestly than those with more modest sniffers. A hefty nasal apparatus conceals vast caverns that fill to capacity when the rhinovirus holds sway over the internal landscape. 

I've been sniffling for most of the past week, and I can tell you that it reduces me to a snarky, snorting snotbag of a man. The ordeal only seems to intensify with age. It used to be that I'd sniffle miserably for two or three days after the onset of a cold, then rebound triumphantly as I'd feel the cool air sweep cleanly through my suffering nostrils. It used to be as inevitable as the sunrise, but no more. The symptoms seem to play hide-and-seek these days: they ebb for a night; I feel certain of victory. Then the next day I'm sniffling robustly once again, honking the old snout and wondering in disbelief at the abundance of nasal output that ends up in each Kleenex. Sometimes the affliction journeys deep into my sinuses, and I can feel the evil inflammation cooking beneath my cheekbones. Somewhere in the hellish recesses below, abominable effluvia are making their way from dark subterranean passages and into the world of light that looms beyond my nose. On those days I don't even want to look at the Kleenex. 

I still sniffle as I write this lamentable report, though my inner passages are beginning to feel navigable once again. I thought I'd better seize the opportunity to record my suffering while I can breathe with relative freedom. 

As I was playing host to this particular cold, sniffling and snuffling, sneezing and snorting most of the day, my unaccompanied mind began to entertain itself. I started wondering about the connection between the nose and words that begin with sn-, at least in English: snout, for example, or snort, or snicker, which is a variety of laughter directed through the nose. (An even better variant of snicker is snigger, which has fallen into disrepute because of its unfortunate resemblance to a much-loathed racial epithet.) 

It seemed extraordinary to me that so many nose-related words begin with sn-. Think of sniff and snuff, sniffle and snuffle. (A snuffle is pretty much the same as a sniffle, though it sounds more serious.) Think of sniveling, which is essentially the sniffling (or snuffling) of someone who is blubbering. Snoring isn't technically a nasal activity, though it emanates from the back of the snout. Snoach is a fine archaic term for speaking through the nose, and my dictionary defines snook as 'a gesture of derision made by thumbing the nose.' One of the all-time great nasal words, the vaguely disreputable snot, actually has a pedigree dating back to the fifteenth century. 

Snot begat snotty, a word of major consequence because it leads the nose out of the body and into the world of metaphor. Snotty is a marvelously useful word when it comes to describing a certain type of insufferable behavior. Snooty describes equally obnoxious behavior but links it more clearly to snobbery, which is another classic metaphorical sn- word, implying a nose lifted disdainfully into the air. Snide is indispensable when it comes to describing a sneaky kind of snootiness. All snide, snooty, snotty people tend to exercise their prerogatives in the form of snubbing, which makes cynics like us wrinkle up our noses and snarl. Of course, cynics are known primarily for sneering, which also tends to wrinkle the nose. And the busybodies of the world love to snoop as they pry their noses into other people's business. 

How is it that so many nose-words begin with sn-? After all, nose -- arguably the most essential nasal word of all -- doesn't fit the pattern. We don't call it a snose, though maybe we should. Why don't more nose-words begin with n-, then? Is there something intrinsically noselike about sniff and sneeze? 

I did a little exploring in my dictionary and found what I thought might be the answer to our quandary. I looked up the origin of snout, a word that, it turns out, is even more mossy with age than snot. Snout derives from the German Schnauze, from which we've gained both the Schnauzer and Jimmy Durante's immortal schnozz. Snout entered our language back in the thirteenth century, so I theorized that it spawned words like sniff and sneeze and snort and snuffle as logical nasal by-products. All those knights and damsels knew a good nose-word when they heard one, right? I suspected that nose itself was a later borrowing from Latin, a gift from mild-mannered scholars and writers who aspired to refine our native tongue. (They're the ones who adopted words like copulate and excrement to replace the earthier four-letter Anglo-Saxon originals.) Then I looked up nose and found, to my puzzlement and distress, that it can be traced back even further than snout -- to the twelfth century. 

So go figure, as they say on Long Island. It looks as if I'll have to abandon my theory about all those wonderful and outlandish sn- words and leave the matter to a qualified philologist. 'Snuff to make me snappish, though 'snot enough to make me snivel.

Cynic's Pick of the Week
As a former Nixonite, I used to take solace in the knowledge that our much-maligned (and often malignant, as it turns out) former chief executive had at least raised two sweet-natured and otherwise commendable daughters. Now comes the news that the two sisters, Tricia and Julie, are taking each other to court over a $12 million bequest from the late Nixon-buddy Bebe Rebozo. O Dick! Where is thy victory?

© 2002 by Bridget Petrella Media Relations. "Some Cynical Guy" appears here by permission of the publisher. If you'd like this column to appear regularly in  your own site or publication, write to UPBEATmag@aol.com.

Profile of a Cynic...

Bayan, who claims to be a "kinder, gentler cynic," lives with his wife in a 100-year-old former livery stable in Philadelphia. His weekly column, "Some Cynical Guy," is published and syndicated by Upbeat Online.