Question
26 Nov 2020
- Korean
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English (US)
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French (France)
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English (UK)
Question about English (US)
What's the ORIGIN of "brown-nose"? I'm eager to know! Can someone please explain or share what you found on the internet? Thank you.😊
What's the ORIGIN of "brown-nose"? I'm eager to know! Can someone please explain or share what you found on the internet? Thank you.😊
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26 Nov 2020
Featured answer
- English (US)
The link below does an excellent job at explaining the origin. I'm a little embarrassed to actually type a literal example of the metaphor. The link does explain it.
https://grammarist.com/compound-words/brown-nos...
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- English (US)
The link below does an excellent job at explaining the origin. I'm a little embarrassed to actually type a literal example of the metaphor. The link does explain it.
https://grammarist.com/compound-words/brown-nos...
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Highly-rated answerer
- Korean
@Blink01 Ah thank you! I actually found it on the internet, but it was too long that I was afraid to read...But now that I browsed it again, I found it can be shortened as "Brown-nose came into use in the 1930s in the American armed forces, and is based on the image of the servile position of sticking one’s nose into someone’s----" right?, which led me to fully understand why you just gave me the link,, hehe Thanks anyway
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- English (US)
@JennieHeo Ok good! You understand and I didn't have to type it. 😉
Many phrases/Idioms/acronyms etc come from specific fields. Military in this case, but also, sailing, boxing, horse racing, cars, sex, etc. Terms that were unique to a particular pursuit, found their way into the common vernacular. If you learn the common origins, then it's easier to apply those contexts to a given term and see if it makes sense in that context.
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Highly-rated answerer
- English (US)
@JennieHeo You're welcome! Don't close this question. That way you can ask me more questions. Pronunciation and phonetics are my current fields of study. If you have questions about those, I'd be particularly happy to answer, or at least learn something I didn't know before. Either way, have yourself a great day!😉
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