nuzzle

English

Etymology

From Middle English noselyng, as nose + -lyng (frequentative suffix). By surface analysis, nose +‎ -le (frequentative). Modern affectionate, intimate sense 1590s, possibly influenced by nestle or nursle (frequentative of nurse).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈnʌzl̩/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈnʌzəl/,
• Rhymes: -ʌzəl
• Hyphenation: nuz‧zle

Verb

nuzzle (third-person singular simple present nuzzles, present participle nuzzling, simple past and past participle nuzzled)

1. (transitive, intransitive) (of animals, lovers, etc) To touch someone or something with the nose.

   The horse nuzzled its foal’s head gently to wake him up.

   The bird nuzzled up to the wires of the cage.

   She nuzzled her boyfriend in the cinema.

   • 2010, Jennifer Egan, “Selling the General”, in A Visit from the Goon Squad:

     Within a couple of hours, pictures of General B nuzzling Kitty Jackson were being posted and traded on the Web.

2. (obsolete) To nurse; to foster; to bring up.
   • 1641 May, John Milton, Of Reformation Touching Church-Discipline in England: And the Cavvses that hitherto have Hindred it; republished as Will Taliaferro Hale, editor, Of Reformation Touching Church-Discipline in England (Yale Studies in English; LIV), New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1916, →OCLC:

     The people had been nuzzled in idolatry.

3. (obsolete) To nestle; to house, as in a nest.
4. (obsolete) To go along with the nose to the ground, like a pig.
   • 1733, Humphry Polesworth [pseudonym; John Arbuthnot], Alexander Pope, compiler, “Law is a Bottomless Pit. Or, The History of John Bull. . The Second Part. Chapter VII. Of the Hard Shifts Mrs. Bull was Put to, to Preserve the Manor of Bullock’s-Hatch; with Sir Roger’s Method to Keep off Importunate Duns.”, in Miscellanies, 2nd edition, volume II, London: Benjamin Motte, , →OCLC, page 94:

     It vvould have done your Heart good to have ſeen him charge through an Army of Lavvyers, Attornies, Clerks, and Tradeſmen; ſometimes vvith Svvord in Hand, at other Times nuzzling like an Eel in the Mud.

   • 1733–1737, Alexander Pope, [Imitations of Horace], London: R Dodsley :
   • 1951 October, R. S. McNaught, “Lines of Approach”, in Railway Magazine, page 706:

     It was nearly all downhill into Shrewsbury, with two intermediate stops, and a grand sequence of long curves around which Soult nuzzled her way with a quick side-to-side action.

Alternative forms

• nosel, nousel, nousle, nowsle, nusle (all obsolete)

Related terms

• nursle

Translations

References

• Folk-etymology: a dictionary of verbal corruptions or words perverted in form or meaning, by false derivation or mistaken analogy, Abram Smythe Palmer, G. Bell and Sons, 1882, p. 261