nare

Usage notes

The Latin declension, naris (singular) and nares (plural), came to medical English from scholarly use of Latin. It is also generally treated by major dictionaries as the naturalized English declension; that is, many enter English nares and naris but do not enter nare (as of 2017). However, nare has been used in English for centuries; for example, Webster's 1913 enters it, and Samuel Butler's use of it in Hudibras in 1663—"There is a Machiavelian plot, / Tho' ev'ry nare olfact it not"—is familiar to readers of Edgar Allan Poe, who used that line as an epigraph to "The Folio Club". It is likely that the singular nare began as the back-formed presumed singular of nares, the latter having been taken by some readers to be an English regular plural, which in turn caused that sense of nares to become realized. But regardless of whether it is such a back-formation or it represents some little-recorded longtime English cognate of Romance words for a nostril (such as narine and narina), it sometimes appears today in phrases giving dosages for nasal administration, such as "5 mL in each nare." In modern medical and pharmacological usage, one can safely prefer naris or nostril simply to avoid using a word that "isn't in the dictionary" and might be viewed by some readers as an "error" for naris.