parson's nose
- noun
- /ˈpɑr.sənz noʊz/
- UK
- The chef served the roasted chicken with a crispy parson's nose that everyone enjoyed.
Examples
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Many people love the parson's nose because it's the most flavorful part of the turkey.
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For Thanksgiving dinner, my grandmother always insists on including the parson's nose as a special treat.
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Have a piece of parson's nose...
Fiction book (2000)
Synonyms
A fatty tail end of a cooked chicken or turkey that many people like to eat
Surface Forms
Morphology
parson's + nose
The phrase refers to the fatty tail of a cooked bird, but knowing 'parson' (a clergyman) and 'nose' (the facial organ) does not allow a learner to deduce that meaning: 'nose' here names a tailpiece and 'parson's' is an historical epithet with no compositional relevance. This is an idiomatic, historically motivated name, so its meaning is not predictable from the constituents for a B1 learner.
Etymology
Parson's nose may come from a time when a church parson was given the bird's fatty nose as a special 'treat' after a meal, with 'nose' used playfully for the tail. That's why today the phrase means 'the fatty tail of a cooked bird'.