Concetti Chiave
- Paws are analogous to feet and hands in four-legged animals, often soft with nails or claws.
- In aquatic invertebrates like squids and octopuses, tentacles replace paws, serving as flexible limbs.
- Paws can metaphorically describe human hands, especially when they're dirty or clumsy.
- Snout refers to the nose, mouth, and jaw of animals such as pigs and dogs, with birds having beaks as an equivalent.
- Both snout and beak are used figuratively to describe people's noses, especially if they are intrusive.
Paw
Paws are the four¬legged land animal's version of feet and hands. Usually, they are soft, and have nails or claws. Many aquatic invertebrates, such as squids and octopuses, have tentacles instead, which are long, flexible, boneless limbs.
Kathy's dog was limping, so she checked his paws and found that he had a thorn stuck in one of them. She carefully plucked it out with a pair of tweezers and he immediately seemed happier.
Once an octopus has wrapped up a crab in its tentacles, there is very little chance that the crab will get free. It will probably be the octopus' dinner.
Paws can also be a humorous metaphor for human hands, especially dirty or clumsy ones. And if someone gets you to do what he or she wants without you realizing it, we say that you are a cat's paw.
I'm going to keep the cookies my mother sent me a secret. I'll hide them under my bed so that my flatmate doesn't get his paws on them. He'd eat them all if he knew that I had them!
Bruce has a friend who is very manipulative. He always tries to make a cat's paw out of Bruce, using him to get information or do his dirty work for him, but this time, Bruce has had enough.
Snout
Snout is the word used to describe an animal's nose, mouth, and jaw. Pigs, dogs, and other such animals have snouts. The equivalent on a bird is a beak. Beaks are rigid structures that serve as nose, mouth and jaw.
I had to laugh when I looked over at the fence that surrounded the pig enclosure. One pig had stuck his snout through a hole in a board, and that was all you could see: his nose, sniffing around!
The woodpecker uses its beak to tap on the trunks of trees to find where there are insect larvae living inside. Then, it uses its beak to puncture the bark and find its dinner!
Figuratively, both snout and beak are often used to refer to people's noses. If the person is nosy and likes to pry into your affairs, you might say he or she is poking their beak into someone else's business.
I don't want to say my cousin Frank's nose is big, but that guy's got a snout on him the size of a zucchini! Of course, I don't let Frank hear me say that.
Mrs. Miller is such a busybody ¬ she's always poking her beak into someone else's business, wanting to know what you're doing.
Domande da interrogazione
- ¿Qué función tienen las patas en los animales terrestres de cuatro patas?
- ¿Cómo se utiliza el término "pata" de manera figurativa?
- ¿Qué es un hocico y qué animales lo tienen?
- ¿Cómo se emplean figurativamente los términos "hocico" y "pico"?
Las patas son la versión de pies y manos de los animales terrestres de cuatro patas, generalmente son suaves y tienen uñas o garras.
"Pata" se usa como metáfora humorística para referirse a manos humanas, especialmente si están sucias o son torpes, y también para describir a alguien que es manipulado sin darse cuenta, como en "ser la pata del gato".
Un hocico es la nariz, boca y mandíbula de un animal, como cerdos y perros. En las aves, el equivalente es el pico.
Figurativamente, "hocico" y "pico" se usan para referirse a la nariz de las personas, especialmente si son entrometidas, como en "meter el pico en los asuntos de otros".
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