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# 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 →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/sniff/#m1)

2) To sniff something means to smell it. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/sniff/#m2)

3) To sniff can mean to breathe in noisily when you have a cold or are crying. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/sniff/#m3)

4) A sniff is the act or sound of sniffing. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/sniff/#m4)

### 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 →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/sniff/#x1)
- Stop sniffing and blow your nose. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/sniff/#x2)
- She sniffed the flowers. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/sniff/#x3)
- Let the dog sniff your hand first. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/sniff/#x4)
- Never sniff chemicals or glue. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/sniff/#x5)
- He gave a sad little sniff. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/sniff/#x6)
- The fox sniffed the air for danger. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/sniff/#x7)
- She raised it to her nose and sniffed at it again and again. [tree →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/sniff/#x8)

### 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.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/112-training-and-enrichment/0/)
- [Detection dogs are trained to sniff out things such as drugs, explosives, fruit carried in bags, money and even some illnesses.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/140-paw-patrol-real-working-dogs/6/)
- [In the park a tiny chihuahua and a huge Great Dane sniff each other hello.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/192-dogs-from-wolves-to-hundreds-of-breeds/0/)
- [On a walk your dog stops at a lamp post and sniffs for ages while you tug the lead.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/193-how-a-dog-thinks-smells-sounds-and-faces/0/)
- [The star-nosed mole swims in North American wetlands and smells underwater by blowing little bubbles onto things and sniffing them back in.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/366-odd-looking-animals-shoebills-star-nosed-moles-saigas-pangolins-and-hagfish/8/)

### Trees and pragmatics

[Every meaning and example of «sniff» parsed by Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/dictionaries/school/S/sniff/), each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.