sniff

«sniff» in Mova's school dictionary: to breathe in quickly through your nose, so that you make… — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 5 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

verb (sniff, sniffs, sniffed, sniffing); noun (a sniff, sniffs)

meaning for a pupil

1) To sniff means to breathe in quickly through your nose, so that you make a small sound. tree →

2) To sniff something means to smell it. tree →

3) To sniff can mean to breathe in noisily when you have a cold or are crying. tree →

4) A sniff is the act or sound of sniffing. tree →

sense in the lessons

In everyday life, dogs sniff everything to learn about it, and a dog sniffing your hand is saying hello. With a cold, you sniff a lot; blowing your nose is better. In science, smell is a sense: we sniff to smell. In safety, never sniff unknown liquids, glue, or chemicals — some fumes are dangerous; in science lessons «waft» the smell towards you instead. In stories a character might sniff to show they disapprove or are about to cry.

examples

• The dog sniffed my shoes. tree →
• Stop sniffing and blow your nose. tree →
• She sniffed the flowers. tree →
• Let the dog sniff your hand first. tree →
• Never sniff chemicals or glue. tree →
• He gave a sad little sniff. tree →
• The fox sniffed the air for danger. tree →
• She raised it to her nose and sniffed at it again and again. tree →

note

Regular verb: sniffed, sniffing. Double f. «Sniffle» = sniff again and again with a cold. «Sniffer dog» = a dog trained to find things by smell. In science, waft smells; do not sniff straight from a container.

In the corpora

• A wild animal spends most of its day busy: searching for food, digging, climbing, sniffing and chasing.
• Detection dogs are trained to sniff out things such as drugs, explosives, fruit carried in bags, money and even some illnesses.
• In the park a tiny chihuahua and a huge Great Dane sniff each other hello.
• On a walk your dog stops at a lamp post and sniffs for ages while you tug the lead.
• The star-nosed mole swims in North American wetlands and smells underwater by blowing little bubbles onto things and sniffing them back in.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «sniff» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.