Tristram Shandy closely defines the word "nose"

I define a nose as follows, ---- intreating only beforehand, and beseeching my readers, both male and female, of what age, complexion, and condition soever, for the love of God and their own souls, to guard against the temptations and suggestions of the devil, and suffer him by no art or wile to put any other ideas into their minds, than what I put into my definition. ---- For by the word Nose, throughout all this long chapter of noses, and in every other part of my work, where the word Nose occurs, -- I declare, by that word I mean a Nose, and nothing more, or less.
-- Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy (1759)

The illustration is "A Stranger with a Large Nose Rides into Strasbourg" by Daniel Nikolaus Chodowiecki, (designs for etchings by Daniel Berger in Laurence Sterne, Das Leben des Herrn Tristram Shandy (Berlin, 1778)).

Comments

[Jake]

If the nose is a metaphor for other male equipment why was Cyrano de Bergerac so shy about courting Roxane? Everyone knows chicks are just looking for a guy with a big nose...