Nosewitness
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A witness who gives evidence of what they have smelled.
"Our language is shot through with expressions that point to this visual primacy: when we need to discover the facts about a crime we seek an eyewitness, not an earwitness. If we were dogs we would probably sniff out a nosewitness but since we are primates and not carnivores we look for someone who saw it done."
Example
More examples"Our language is shot through with expressions that point to this visual primacy: when we need to discover the facts about a crime we seek an eyewitness, not an earwitness. If we were dogs we would probably sniff out a nosewitness but since we are primates and not carnivores we look for someone who saw it done."
Etymology
From nose + witness, by analogy with eyewitness and earwitness.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.