to thumb one's nose at
8
9.2
- idiom
- Informal
:
despreciar
- Despite the warnings, he thumbed his nose at authority and organized the event anyway.
- thumb your nose at authority
- thumb his nose at the establishment
Examples
-
The fact that he doesn't play to the media angers them because he thumbs his nose at their power.
Blog text (7) -
A former cop perhaps thumbing his nose at his old colleagues.
Fiction book (1999) -
All you can do is thumb your nose at it.
-
Anything to thumb your nose at authority.
-
I can almost see him thumbing his nose at you.
Blog text (21) -
He's been thumbing his nose at us since day one.
Blog text (17) -
Mugabe is a despot who, for a decade, has thumbed his nose at opposition attempts to unseat him.
Academic text (2009) -
So while we have been, over the past ten years, reducing our military, they've been building up their arsenal and thumbing their noses at us, violating every treaty that we have with them.
-
With Facemash, he'd hacked into the Harvard computers, thumbed his nose at the Ad Board, gotten a lot of notoriety.
-
The athlete thumbed his nose at the rules by competing while injured.
Synonyms
3
7.5
To show you think something is not good enough
1
9.9
To show anger by holding up the middle finger at someone
Show openly that you do not respect someone, often by a rude gesture
To show you do not respect someone by putting your thumb to your nose and wiggling your fingers
To put your thumb on your nose and wiggle your fingers to show disrespect
To show anger or insult someone by lifting the middle finger
To move your hand to show you do not care
Antonyms
How Disrespectful
- Offensive
313
1.3
- Offensive
27
5.5
- Informal
8
9.2
7
6.3
∞
1.0
332
3.0
3
7.5
Surface Forms
Morphology
The literal parts ('thumb', 'nose', 'at') describe a concrete mocking gesture (putting a thumb to the nose toward someone), so a learner who knows the words can partly infer it's a rude or contemptuous action. However, understanding that this specific gesture functions idiomatically to show contempt or defiance requires cultural/pragmatic knowledge and is not fully predictable from the words alone, so the expression is only partially transparent.
Etymology
Thumb one's nose at comes from a rude gesture where someone puts their thumb on their nose, spreads the fingers and wiggles them to mock another person, creating a clear picture of refusal and insult. That's why the phrase means 'to show disrespect' or 'to refuse to follow the rules'.