Word.ws English Dictionary

nose out of joint

nose out of joint noun: an emotional state where someone is in a bad mood because they have been offended by or taken exception (objected) to some action, usually involving being seen in an inferior light to another person.

Noun

nose out of joint (plural noses out of joint)

  1. (idiomatic) An emotional state where someone is in a bad mood because they have been offended by or taken exception (objected) to some action, usually involving being seen in an inferior light to another person.
    • I think he got his nose out of joint when they promoted his friend but not him.

Forms of nose out of joint

pluralnoses out of joint

Questions about nose out of joint

What does nose out of joint mean?
Nose out of joint means an emotional state where someone is in a bad mood because they have been offended by or taken exception (objected) to some action, usually involving being seen in an inferior light to another person.
What part of speech is nose out of joint?
Nose out of joint is a noun.
What is the plural of nose out of joint?
The plural of nose out of joint is noses out of joint.

Words near nose out of joint in the dictionary

  1. nose lines
  2. nose monkey
  3. nose monkeys
  4. nose of wax
  5. nose out
  6. nose out of joint
  7. nose over
  8. nose pad
  9. nose pads
  10. nose paint
  11. nose peg

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: nose out of joint (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-nose out of joint.wav.

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