---
title: "Powder my nose" is an old-fashioned way, used by women, to say go t… — Soft words for hard things: the toilet and bodil… · tree and pragmatics
description: "Powder my nose" is an old-fashioned way, used by women, to say go to the toilet. Who acts: nose, Powder. A sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: the toilet and bodily functions» of the euphemisms course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clau
---

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# Soft words for hard things: the toilet and bodily functions, sentence 14

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
"Powder my nose" is an old-fashioned way, used by women, to say go to the toilet.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** nose, Powder · **What happens:** powder, be, use, say, go · **To what, where:** fashioned way, toilet · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: the toilet and bodily functions» of the euphemisms course of Mova's primary school. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (nose, Powder), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:euphemisms:006-toilet-words.lesson:14
# text = "Powder my nose" is an old-fashioned way, used by women, to say go to the toilet.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = euphemisms
# lesson = 006-toilet-words.lesson
# annotation = Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): no change
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	_
2	Powder	powder	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	11	nsubj	_	_
3	my	my	PRON	PRP$	Case=Gen|Number=Sing|Person=1|Poss=Yes|PronType=Prs	4	nmod:poss	_	_
4	nose	nose	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	nsubj	_	_
5	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	_
6	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	11	cop	_	_
7	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	11	det	_	_
8	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
9	-	-	PUNCT	HYPH	_	8	punct	_	_
10	fashioned	fashioned	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	11	amod	_	_
11	way	way	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	0	root	_	_
12	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	13	punct	_	_
13	used	use	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	11	acl	_	_
14	by	by	ADP	IN	_	15	case	_	_
15	women	woman	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	13	obl:agent	_	_
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
17	to	to	PART	TO	_	18	mark	_	_
18	say	say	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	13	advcl	_	_
19	go	go	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	18	ccomp	_	_
20	to	to	ADP	IN	_	22	case	_	_
21	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	22	det	_	_
22	toilet	toilet	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	19	obl	_	_
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	11	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .note -->
No stored speech act for this sentence.

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **powder** *in a quote* |  | my nose |  |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 2 | **is a** | present | Powder | a fashioned way |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **use** | participle |  | a fashioned way *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn eat-39.1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 4 | **say** *speech: assert* | to-infinitive |  |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 5 | **go** | infinitive |  |  |  | the toilet |  |  | vn escape-51.1-1 «NP V PP.initial\_location»: agent=Theme to toilet=Initial\_Location |

<!-- .note -->
One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

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**Licence: [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)**, as the whole of Mova corpus 0.4, of which this treebank (the agreed school, `mova-school-agreed-en.conllu`) is part. The lessons were written for Mova's primary school. Sentence `school:euphemisms:006-toilet-words.lesson:14`.

**The tree:** Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): no change. **The frames** are read from the tree by Mova's frames reader (`prag`) when this page is built, the lesson read in order, so a pronoun may be resolved from an earlier sentence.

See the [release 0.4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/releases/0.4/).

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