Word.ws English Dictionary

nose-to-nose

nose-to-nose adjective: direct, confrontational.

Adjective

nose-to-nose (comparative more nose-to-nose, superlative most nose-to-nose)

  1. Direct, confrontational.
    • Almost indistinguishable from the earlier 115-horse airplane, the new model is designed from the ground up to go nose-to-nose with big-engine, high-performance kit planes.1988 April, Popular Mechanics, volume 165, number 4, page 70
    • Several. airlines. offer. domestic-partner. benefits. and. soar. into. a. nose-to-nose. battle. to. prove. which. carrier. can. take. you. higher.1999 September 14, Ted Gideonsi, The Advocate, number 794, page 34

Forms of nose-to-nose

comparativemore nose-to-nose
superlativemost nose-to-nose

Questions about nose-to-nose

What does nose-to-nose mean?
Nose-to-nose means direct, confrontational.
What part of speech is nose-to-nose?
Nose-to-nose is an adjective.

Words near nose-to-nose in the dictionary

  1. nose-pickings
  2. nose-picks
  3. nose-ringed
  4. nose-shot
  5. nose-suspended
  6. nose-to-nose
  7. nosean
  8. noseans
  9. noseart
  10. nosebag
  11. nosebagged

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: nose-to-nose (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “nose-to-nose.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/nose-to-nose. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.