A little up the nose on that one

Question

In a sitcom,A couple are talking, and the man put his forefinger on his wife's lips to stop her talking.But it was positioned a little high almost at her nose.So she says " a little up the nose on that one."                     Is she saying your finger is a little up the nose?? Are both of the sentences the same? If not, what difference do you sense?

RayH · Accepted Answer

eunjinnySo she says " a little up the nose on that one."
Is she saying your finger is a little up the nose?

I would take this to mean exactly what it says, the male actor actually (but accidentally) shoved his finger up the female's nose by a small amount.

This is typically the kind of thing you get to see in the bloopers section of a DVD.

Eunjinny · Answer

Then, can I say "your finger is a little up the nose?" Is this the same as what she said?

Avangi · Answer

Aside from Ray's suggestion, "up the nose" only evokes snorting cocaine, which doesn't seem to relate to your story; and the traditional insult involving another *******.

In the sixties we had the popular song, "May the bird of paradise fly up your nose," which is a blending of good will and bad; and the expression popularized by a highschool sitcom, "up your nose with a rubber hose," probably a euphamism.

We don't have enough sense of what's going on in your skit to tell if any of this is really suggested - eg., the emotional sequence of the participants.

I agree with Ray that it was probably a blooper - a completely accidental bit of visual comedy - so her remark would have been ad lib, or unscripted. It may have had absolutely no significance, and be unworthy of your attempts to paraphrase it.

If you had to make a complete idiomatic sentence out of it, you'd probably say, "Your finger is a little up my nose." But it works better as is, as a truncation. "A little off the top?" (haircut) "A little to the left." (back scratch)

A little up the nose on that one

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