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Cocking Snooks, Thumbing noses and Long Bacon

Posted by Steve E. on February 11, 2005

In Reply to: Cocking Snooks, Thumbing noses and Long Bacon posted by Smokey Stover on February 11, 2005

: : I just caught a the tail end of an item on R2 yesterday, (Alex Lester 0620)which connected Thumbing one's nose with a Lancashire dialect term "... making Long Bacon at someone"
: : An earlier thread on this forum makes a laborious connection between "cocking a snook" and "thumbing your nose".
: : I could suggest a certain farmyard theme linking these terms, or is this too fanciful?

: When I was in the fifth grade I had occasion to thumb my nose during recess at that snotty Phyllis Bensink. My teacher, Viola Fardink (whose father, Ote Fardink, was the town barber), called me aside and peremptorily slapped my face--hard! Apparently I had made an obscene gesture, although I didn't know it then and don't know it now. Is there supposed to be something obscene suggested by thumbing one's nose? SS

In my youth in the US, thumbing one's nose was meant to mean essentially: "up yours"

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