Nose Out of Joint

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Oh, this is Scott. I’m calling from Tampa.

Welcome to the show, Scott.

Hey, Scott, what’s going on?

A couple of weeks ago, I was talking to my mom, and I heard her use an expression that I had never heard her, or anybody else for that matter, say before.

And it really surprised me, you know, after 34 years of life here, and you think you know a person, you know.

He and my dad, they had invited my 17-year-old nephew to an event, to one of those monster truck rallies, something like that.

And they did not invite his younger sister, my niece.

They didn’t think she would be interested.

But apparently, when she found out that her brother had been invited and she had not, according to my mom, this is the phrase, she got her nose out of joint.

And I was able to pick up the meaning by context.

You know, obviously she was upset.

And I said, where did that come from?

I’ve never heard you say that before.

She said, oh, it’s something my mom used to always say.

But I’ve never heard my grandmother say it either.

So I was hoping you could tell me a little more about it.

Well, sure.

And so the basic idea was that she was unhappy, right?

Right.

Yeah, and it sort of gives you a visual, doesn’t it, of somebody with their face kind of painfully askew or damaged or something like that?

Yeah, it doesn’t sound terribly pleasant.

And that’s the basic idea.

I’ve seen early versions of this that may make more sense.

Somebody had their nose out of socket, you know, that I’m going to pull on your nose and pull it out of socket.

But, yeah, sort of the same idea.

Well, there’s a couple things about this.

Some of the older dictionaries, let’s say in the 1800s, suggest that there may be Gaelic roots to this.

There’s a word N-O-S, which I presume is pronounced similar to nose, which means customer habit.

And so there’s this old meaning of this, which kind of fits your circumstance, where let’s say that you were the favorite of someone powerful.

Let’s say that the lord of the town made you his pet and gave you all kinds of money and help and whatever.

But then he had a new pet and a favorite, and you were kind of thrown by the wayside.

You would have your nose out of joint.

Or let’s say that you were dating someone and got replaced.

If it got replaced, you would then have your nose out of joint.

So it’s really about falling out of favor with someone.

And so that kind of fits really nicely.

I don’t know if there’s anything to this Gaelic origin, but it’s a really interesting theory.

And I looked it up in a bunch of dictionaries, and sure enough, there’s a word N-O-S in Gaelic.

But again, I’m not sure how it’s pronounced.

And it doesn’t explain the word joint, which might just be a multilingual kind of pun or an add-on there, just to kind of make it fit into English.

But I’m interested, Scott, that you could figure it out from the context.

Yeah, I mean, you know, it made sense.

Yeah, something that you didn’t really want to look at.

So it definitely goes back a little bit in time there.

Oh, 1500s easily.

Hey, Scott, thanks so much for calling.

Oh, yeah, thank you guys for putting some light on that.

Sure, a pleasure.

Sure thing.

Thanks, bud.

Bye-bye.

All right, take care. Bye-bye.

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