snuffle

UK/ˈsnʌfəl/US/ˈsnʌfəl/

verbC2Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speech — snuff sits at #5,978Too rare in one of the two pools to compare — fewer than 20 uses in speech or in writing

Other forms: snuffles

To snuffle is to breathe noisily through a blocked nose. Snuffling with a cold, the dog snuffled about, a snuffling sound.

It covers a cold and a dog searching by scent, and both are the same noise. The word is close relatives with sniffle and snuff, all built on the same sound.

Definitions of snuffle

1verbsnuffleTo breathe noisily through a blocked nose.C2
“With his heavy cold, the little boy snuffled all through the night.”

snuffle is a breathing.

Also accepted in games: sniffle

Where it comes from

Probably from Dutch snuffelen, related to snuff and to sniffle.

Dutch
snuffelen — to snuffle
English, today
snuffle

Probably from Low German - and Dutch snuffelen (“to snuffle”), equivalent to snuff + -le. Compare also Old English snofl (“snot, nasal mucus”), which might not have survived into Middle English.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

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