Word.ws English Dictionary

ring in one's nose

ring in one's nose noun: a compulsion to gamble regardless of one's losses.

Noun

ring in one's nose

  1. (slang) A compulsion to gamble regardless of one's losses.
    • So, the dealers are thinking, “What a mamaluke! The guy's got a ring in his nose!” But then he comes back and plays some more. And all the guys like him, because he's funny and he's one of the boys and he tips big.2010, Steven R. Schirripa, Charles Fleming, The Goomba's Book of Love
    • He admitted in a dugout interview in 1969 that there was a time when he “had a ring in his nose” and once lost $8,000 two days in a row at the track.2017, Paul Dickson, Leo Durocher: Baseball's Prodigal Son

Questions about ring in one's nose

What does ring in one's nose mean?
Ring in one's nose means a compulsion to gamble regardless of one's losses.
What part of speech is ring in one's nose?
Ring in one's nose is a noun.

Words near ring in one's nose in the dictionary

  1. ring girls
  2. ring hollow
  3. ring homomorphism
  4. ring homomorphisms
  5. ring in
  6. ring in one's nose
  7. ring isomorphism
  8. ring isomorphisms
  9. ring job
  10. ring jobs
  11. ring junction

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ring in one's 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.

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