Nose Tapping



When a character taps their nose, they knows something. There's some subtext hiding in their conversation and, oh, I get it. Nose tap, nose tap. So we don't have to say anything and make it all a little too obvious.

Also, in Charades, the one doing the acting out traditionally touches his nose to indicate someone got the right answer (See, he's saying they got it right "on the nose." And he's not allowed to talk...).

This seems to be a western cultural thing; in Asian cultures, pointing to the nose (or the face in general) is equivalent to the western gesture of gesturing at your chest to indicate you're talking about yourself (essentially, the unconscious gesture you do anytime you say, "Who, me?") Indeed, Nose Tapping is almost always dependent on the context in order to make much sense at all what it is. All any of these examples can really say for sure is that tapping the nose means something.

Can, of course, be used to indicate The Nose Knows, but not required.

Completely unrelated to Cherry Tapping.

Anime and Manga

 * Played with in the Battle Royale manga : Sugimura always unconsciously taps his nose whenever he's feeling embarrassment. However most of the time it's because he's saying something he should keep to himself or not saying something he'd want to say. Which means that everyone knows when he's hiding something, except himself.
 * Xellos does this every time he says his Catch Phrase.

Art

 * Santa Claus does this in 1823's "A Visit from St. Nicholas" (better known as "'Twas the Night Before Christmas"), and it's become associated with the figure ever since. Some interpretations have it as a requirement for him to fly up the chimney, perhaps because later audiences weren't certain what the gesture meant.

Film
""Sedagive?!""
 * In Blank Check, the bank manager, who believes he's delivered $1 Million in stolen money to a recently-released criminal, invokes this when the man who was supposed to pick up the money arrives. It doesn't work.
 * In the Made for TV Movie of Dead Like Me, the Reapers tap their noses to each other at the end in order to remain incognito.
 * One a scene from the extended version of the film of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Merry and Pippin stumble upon barrels of pipeweed in the ruins of Isengard. Merry says it would be better to not tell Treebeard about it; Pippin says "Oh, I get it" and touches the side of his nose, too.
 * In the movie The Sting, the nose tapping is a signal between the con men.
 * In From Russia With Love, Bond's ally, Kerim Bey does this while referring to his nose as his "old friend", who tells him that "something smells".
 * Frederick does the Charades version in Young Frankenstein.

Literature
"Colon tapped the side of his nose. "Politics, " he said. ..
 * From the Discworld novel Jingo:

"Why're you picking your nose, sarge?"

"I'm tapping it," said Colon severely. "That's to show I'm in the know."

"In the nose, " said Nobby cheerfully."


 * In Going Postal, a drunken Crispin Horsefry tries to do this, and keeps missing. Later, Moist experiences the horror that is his "assistant" Mr. Groat tapping his nose.
 * Nesta does it in the last book of the Mates, Dates series.
 * Gilderoy Lockhart has an annoying habit of doing this.
 * Some of the characters in Redwall do this on occasion.

Live-Action TV

 * Just watch Doctor Cox closely at all, sometime ever.
 * John McGinley does this as an homage to Paul Newman from The Sting (see page image).
 * Seen in Hannah Montana: Hannah is interviewing prospective bodyguards. One says in reply to a question "It's better not to know" and touches the side of his nose.
 * In an episode of Are You Being Served, Captain Peacock indicates with this gesture that he knows something about somebody other than himself being promoted to Mr. Rumbole's position, but has been told not to say why. Mr. Lucas takes the gesture as meaning that Captain Peacock didn't get the position because he's Jewish. Captain Peacock ends up explaining the gesture.
 * On News Radio, Bill says "It is the wise man who knows there's a lot he does not know." Matthew responds with a nose tap, "I know."
 * In an episode of NCIS, Ziva makes this gesture while interrogating a perp. It's significant because it's the body language equivalent of an idiom, but she's not getting it wrong.
 * Adrian Monk did this to get the hotel security during the episode in which Benjy sees a murder but Monk is the only person to believe him.

Music

 * During the Tripod song "Justin", when they're trying to sing about Jesus without using either the name Jesus or any other word that could be connected to Christianity. Everytime they try to cover up something, Gatesy does this. Subverted when, near the end of the song, Scod complains that Gatesy is making fun of his huge nose, which Gatesy admits to.

Web Comics

 * Gunnerkrigg Court: Bud demonstrates that having a nose isn't strictly necessary for pulling this gesture off, but it helps.

Western Animation

 * In the Futurama episode "Spanish Fry", aliens steal Fry's nose. Amy asks if they were "little grey dudes with big oval heads," and Fry points to the blank spot in the middle of his face, only for Amy to reply that she "doesn't get that gesture."
 * In a Halloween episode of The Simpsons, when the school is murdering kids and putting them into the lunches. Krabappel guesses what happens, Skinner touches his nose, Krabappel laughs and keeps eating.
 * Super Duper Sumos: Part of their Transformation Sequence includes a pre-battle taunt. Kimo's taunt is to mockingly tap his nose.