get up someone's nose
In real, traceable use. Part of the curated seed collection; community review is coming.
Meaning · English
To annoy someone; to get on someone's nerves.
Register: slang
Where it’s used:
Used
American English
Examples
He succeeded in getting up everyone's nose, particularly the flared nostrils of Kenneth Williams who saw a foreigner — in the Foreign Legion — usurping his position as the mentor of the team.
So I decided to stay there, just to get up her nose
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Adapted from English Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30 via kaikki.org).
Common questions
What does “get up someone's nose” mean?
To annoy someone; to get on someone's nerves.
Is “get up someone's nose” formal or informal?
get up someone's nose is generally slang.