Hello,
I nowhere find this expression:
…“his noses was bare.” I thought it means he was helpless but I am not sure.
Please, I ask for somebody’s help.
Many thanks:
Kati Svaby
I’ve never heard that expression or anything like it, Kati.
Like Bev, I’ve never heard such an expression, and nothing that might be similar comes to mind either. Are you sure it wasn’t a version of ‘keep one’s nose clean’ or possibly ‘no skin off my nose’?
The idea of multiple noses is odd. It’s also ungrammatical with the singular ‘was’ and the plural ‘noses’…
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[size=75]“It is fortunate that diplomats have long noses since they usually cannot see beyond them.” ~ Paul Claudel [/size]
Hello Bev and ESL-Expert,
Many thanks for your answers. Yesterday evening I didn’t see what I see this morning.
This morning I listened to the sentence again.
Here is the whole sentence.I think I’ve already understood it. He could be without glasses because of his successful laser eye surgery.
“Meet a smart old high school friend who always wore thick glasses, but whose noses is now bare.”…but later I’ve heard:… he is home to show off the result of his $600 laser eye surgery, performed, he says, in an ultramodern Chines clinic for a tenth the price the procedure would cost home."
I was mistaken because these Chines migrants are so unlucky, defenceless in this part of the book.
Many thanks for your help. No help is a help also. Because I began to look for the mistake in-myself.
Bye:
Kati
Am I right? I was mistaken because this part is about very unlucky people.
Hi Kati,
Isn’t this simply ‘whose nose is’, and nothing to do with ‘noses’?
Alan
AsAlan says Kati:
whose nose is now bare, that is, someone who no longer has to carry the bridge of a pair of spectacles on his nose. His nose is bare because he isn’t wearing glasses.
Many thanks Bez and Alan,
I am very sorry but I had been listening to the text wrongly and I heard: noses. I didn’t understand me either why after noses is an "is ". That’s why I thought the noses has even a singular meaning. And I had been looking up “noses” (sing.) in dictionaries.
I’ve just returned home and I found your messages so I’ve listened again to the text.
Of course I was mistaken. Now I understood clearly is really nose and not noses in the text.
Many thanks for your help.I’m sorry to have made a fuss.
Regards:
Kati Svaby
It’s not ‘making a fuss’, Kati. It’s ‘asking pertinent questions to find out more’.
That error was an easy mistake to make, though once you explained the context, it was also easy to resolve.
Hello Bez,
You can always console me.
Many thanks:
Kati