In an article on using DNA from a booger SDSTAFF Hawk suggests using “nasal secretions” as an alternative to “booger.” That sounds fine for a scientific report, but I have a feeling most people wouldn’t automatically understand “nasal secretions” to refer to the brown-green gobs they know as “boogers.” I want to know if there are any other words for boogers.
I ask because a student of mine in Japan asked how to say “hanakuso” in English and the only word I could think of was “booger.” I was a little embarrassed to give that as my answer because it sounds somewhat childish to me, like saying “poop.” English-Japanese dictionaries offered “nasal discharge” or “dried mucus.” Those seem along the same lines as “nasal secretions” and I suspect would be equally incomprehensible to the average person.
So how about it? Are there any other words that people use for boogers?
All puns aside, snot is not the same thing as a booger, is it? Snot is amorphous; a booger has shape. Is there any other word for that glob we all know and love as a booger?
Larry Niven and David Gerrold used “nasal dropping” in “The Flying Sorcerors”. I’d suggest “dried phlegm”. I’m sure that medical dictionaries will have some appropriately obscure term.
I can offer another variation: “bogle”, but I cannot say how widespread it is (!). Two things are interesting here: the lack of terms for such things and the apparent formality of the term “snot”.
“Nasal discharge” is too general; it can also refer to mucous (which does have its own name). Sure, “solidified nasal discharge” would work, but you’d think that there’d be a single word to describe it-- Every other bodily secretion has at least one, and usually two or three, technical names (mucous, phlegm, etc.).