Sniff

How to spell sniff

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce sniff

What does sniff mean?

1. verbTo draw air sharply through the nose, often to detect a smell or because of a cold.
2. nounA single act of drawing air sharply through the nose.

Sniff in a sentence

• verb

  The dog began to sniff at the bottom of the door.

• noun

  One sniff of the burnt toast told him breakfast was ruined.

• verb

  She paused to sniff the milk before pouring it into her coffee.

• noun

  With a quick sniff she decided the perfume was too strong.

Where does sniff come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Sniff is an imitative or echoic word, meaning it was coined to mimic the sharp sound of drawing air sharply through the nose. It first appears in English around the late 1300s to 1400s and belongs to a small family of similar nose-and-breath words such as snuff, snort, sniffle, and snivel, all of which share the suggestive 'sn-' opening that English speakers have long associated with the nose. There is no grand classical root here: the spelling simply tries to capture a sound, which is why the doubled 'ff' and the brisk single syllable feel so onomatopoeic. The figurative sense of treating something with disdain, as in turning up one's nose, grew naturally from the literal action of giving a dismissive sniff. Because the word is short and phonetically regular, its spelling is unusually faithful to its sound.

How the word is built

• sniff (imitative root suggesting a sharp nasal intake of breath)