Word.ws English Dictionary

hold one's nose up

hold one's nose up verb: to be disdainful or dismissive towards something.

Verb

hold one's nose up (third-person singular simple present holds one's nose up, present participle holding one's nose up, simple past and past participle held one's nose up)

  1. To be disdainful or dismissive towards something.
    • The era of the "church-basement liberal" is over. Those who sit around meeting in the church basements of Cambridge, holding their noses up at the prospect of supporting candidates who don't agree with every last one of their issues, had exactly zero influence in this year's critical elections.1990 December 9, Richard Braun, “A Whole New Day For The Party: Giving Us A Voice”, in Gay Community News, volume 18, number 21, page 5

Synonyms of hold one's nose up

Forms of hold one's nose up

third-person singular presentholds one's nose up
present participleholding one's nose up
past participleheld one's nose up
pastheld one's nose up

Questions about hold one's nose up

What does hold one's nose up mean?
Hold one's nose up means to be disdainful or dismissive towards something.
What part of speech is hold one's nose up?
Hold one's nose up is a verb.
What is the past tense of hold one's nose up?
The past tense of hold one's nose up is held one's nose up.

Words near hold one's nose up in the dictionary

  1. hold one's jaw
  2. hold one's liquor
  3. hold one's mouth right
  4. hold one's nerve
  5. hold one's nose
  6. hold one's nose up
  7. hold one's own
  8. hold one's peace
  9. hold one's pee
  10. hold one's piece
  11. hold one's piss

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hold one's nose up (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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