Talk:snout
Latest comment: 14 years ago by Dan Polansky in topic Request for verification
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snout has a verb form listed, meaning to provide with a snout. Can we confirm? (Saw some entries at google books that might mean it has a sense for an animal to dig or nose with its snout, I was looking for snouting). RJFJR 03:37, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
- Could they possibly mean constructions like large-snouted, hairy-snouted? You can, in a way, read those as "provided with a snout of such a kind", but it doesn't imply a full verb with all the inflections. Equinox 13:39, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
- Here are some random data points, which I am too tired at the moment to do anything constructive with:
- As a legit verb, "snout" can apparently refer to something done to hogs before slaughtering.
- We should definitely also have the sense "to push or probe (as) with a snout", which accounts for at least 1 in 100 hits on b.g.c. (the other 99 being scannos for "shout").
- The sense given is more problematic. I'm inclined to think that it exists, but the only cites I can find are for the past participle, and they're right on the line between verb and adjective: watchtowers snouted with machine guns, shoes snouted with a metal pike. This seems more like [participle]-with-[noun] than [adjective]-with-[noun] (cf. "red with blood"), but I'd like to see at least one clear-cut use.
- "Snouting" also apparently has a sense in early cyclotron lingo, but again attestation seems to be participle-only and therefore dubious as a verb. -- Visviva 15:35, 10 December 2008 (UTC)
- "Snouting" seems to be one of w:H. L. Mencken's favorite words. He uses it in a way to suggest three pig behaviors,: sniffing out, rooting, eating greedily:
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- It would be wrong to list this under the infinitive verb as lemma, because it is not used in the infinitive. (Listing this way would be a hypercorrective back-formation.)
- OED has other verb forms, but this one is a separate entry labelled ppl. a., meaning provided or furnished with a snout, or snout-shaped. Wiktionary:Entry_layout_explained/POS_headers allows a Participle header, but comments it “Used in some Russian, Lithuanian, and many Latin entries.” —Michael Z. 2009-04-11 22:02 z
- Closing as attested. Attestation provided in the citations namespace: Citations:snout. --Dan Polansky 17:19, 6 February 2010 (UTC)