on the nose

Questions about on the nose

What does on the nose mean?

on the nose means "being precise with regard to a prescribed or specified criterion". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

What is another word for on the nose?

Close synonyms include on the button, precisely, exactly, on the dot, on the button. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is on the nose a common word?

on the nose is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.