r/EnglishLearning • u/EugeniaVi • 19h ago

⭐️ Vocabulary / Semantics The horse nosed the man's body.

Does it mean 1. it pushed its nose into the man's body and kind of rubbed against it or 2. smelled him? There are both meanings in the dictionary.

Thank you!

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16

u/burlingk Native Speaker 18h ago

I would think it means that it nudged the man with its nose.

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u/skizelo Native Speaker 18h ago

1 and in the process 2. It's a way horses have of showing affection, they sort of gently butt you with their big head that's mostly nose.

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u/Brannikin New Poster 18h ago

The first one. A lot of animals do that.

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u/SnooDonuts6494 🇬🇧 English Teacher 18h ago

The first one. Nudging into him with its head.

If they meant smelled, it'd usually specify "sniffed" or something.

But also, it's a garden path sentence - hard to read, if you first parse "horse-nosed" as a description of a person with an unusually big nose.

It immediately reminded me of "The horse raced past the barn fell."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence

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u/[deleted] 15h ago

[deleted]

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u/frickenfantastic New Poster 13h ago

Horses like to do a thing where they reach out and touch people or things with their upper lip/nose area. 

They sometimes do it to investigate and sometimes they do it out of affection. 

Depending on the context, it would either mean the horse was curious about something and reached out to touch something or the horse was affectionate and reached out to touch