snoof
snoof verb: to sniff around, usually in the search for food.
Verb
snoof (third-person singular simple present snoofs, present participle snoofing, simple past and past participle snoofed)
- To sniff around, usually in the search for food.
Adjective
snoof (comparative more snoof, superlative most snoof)
- Having lost the sense of smell.
- Luckily, they're all ‘snoof’."
"What?" said Michael […].
"It's a portmanteau syllable for 'Got no sense of smell to speak of.' And wanted, too. One says 'deaf,' 'blind,' 'dumb'—why not ‘snoof’?"1928, John Galsworthy, Swan Song (A Modern Comedy part 3) - […] it means when a person lacks his sense of smell. I'm glad I'm not snoof.1946, Una Jeffers to Dorothy Brett, The Collected Letters Of Robinson Jeffers. With Selected Letters Of Una Jeffers, volume 3, Stanford, p. 410
- Luckily, they're all ‘snoof’."
Examples of snoof in a sentence
- And the word "snoof" has been brought forth (by an analogy with "deaf") to describe someone who is devoid of, or deficient in, the sense of smell.1966, Monroe C. Beardsley, Thinking Straight; Principles of Reasoning for Readers and Writers, Prentice-Hall, page 292:
- My mother-in-law, Louise Field Cooper, used the word snoof to convey some of this meaning, as in “he has such a bad cold he's gone totally snoof.1994, Diana Starr Cooper, Night After Night, Island Press, page 127:
Forms of snoof
| Verb | |
|---|---|
| third-person singular present | snoofs |
| present participle | snoofing |
| past participle | snoofed |
| past | snoofed |
| Adjective | |
| comparative | more snoof |
| superlative | most snoof |
Origin of snoof
Perhaps an alteration of sniff or snuff; or perhaps a blend of snort + sniff.
Probably coined by Galsworthy (see quotations).
Questions about snoof
- What does snoof mean?
- Snoof means to sniff around, usually in the search for food.
- How do you use snoof in a sentence?
- And the word "snoof" has been brought forth (by an analogy with "deaf") to describe someone who is devoid of, or deficient in, the sense of smell.
- What part of speech is snoof?
- Snoof can be a verb or an adjective.
- What is the past tense of snoof?
- The past tense of snoof is snoofed.
Words near snoof in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: snoof (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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Cite this entry: “snoof.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/snoof. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.