Entry · catalog no. 0015
nose open
/ noʊz ˈoʊpən /NOHZ OH-pin
phrase · Black urban America — documented in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles · 1950s
✓ Verified
1.
Captivated by a lover to the point of losing self-command — trailing after them, spending on them, taking treatment you would not take from anybody else. Usually said about somebody else, and usually with a mix of amusement and warning. The construction runs both ways: the smitten party has his nose open, and the object of the infatuation has his nose open — that is, holds the power.
“That girl got his nose wide open — he ain't been right since June.”
2.
In 1970s drug argot, a secondary sense: strung out on cocaine, playing on the same image of open, hungry nostrils.
“He had his nose wide open all that winter.”
Origin & Attribution
A Black American idiom, documented as such by every specialist lexicographer who has handled it — Green's Dictionary of Slang tags it US Black. It moved north with Southern Black speech and was fully established in Black urban vernacular by the 1950s and 60s, reaching general American use only late and secondhand. Frederic Cassidy, chief editor of the Dictionary of American Regional English, singled the phrase out as evidence of the linguistic originality of Black speakers. It is not, as sometimes assumed, a coinage of 1980s or 1990s hip-hop; it is at minimum a generation older.
1963
Raven I. McDavid Jr.'s supplement to Mencken's The American Language records it as Black speech
1971
Hermese E. Roberts glosses nose open in The Third Ear: A Black Glossary
2004
The Wire, s3e5 — "Now she got our boy with his nose wide open"
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide / diaspora
Black urban America — documented in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles · 1950s
Spoken by
Black Americans across regions; carried in R&B lyrics, street glossaries and Black fiction
$NOSEOPThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady63 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
55/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1963
in the culture
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@auntiereg
Atlanta, GA
@deltasoul
Memphis, TN
Contribute your pronunciation
Citations & Sources
■
Mencken's The American Language, abridged ed. — Raven I. McDavid Jr., 1963
text · reference
■
The Third Ear: A Black Glossary — Hermese E. Roberts, 1971
text · glossary
■
Dopefiend — Donald Goines, 1971
text · novel
■
+ Cite a sourceRunnin' Down Some Lines: The Language and Culture of Black Teenagers — Edith Folb, Harvard University Press, 1980
text · fieldwork
See also