nose [OE] The Latin root of nose is nasus, which is the source of our word nasal [ME], and is also related to ness [OE], meaning a headland or promontory. A nostril [OE] is literally a ‘nose hole’. In Old English the word was spelled nosterl or nosthyrl, and came from nosu ‘nose’ and thyrl ‘hole’. Nozzle was originally an early 17th slang form of ‘nose’. Nuzzle [LME] may also be from nose. To cut off your nose to spite your face was proverbial in both medieval Latin and French, and has been found in English since the mid 16th century. Since the 1780s a nose has been a spy or police informer. The idea of such a person being a ‘nose’, or ‘sticking their nose in’, is also found in words such as nark (see romani words) and *snout, and in nosy. The first nosy parker appeared in 1896. Nosy itself goes back to 1620, in the sense ‘having a big nose’, and to at least the 1820s in the sense ‘inquisitive’. The common surname Parker was originally a name for the caretaker of a park or large enclosure of land, but the reason for the use of this name is unknown.