Sayings and other stable phrases are used both in literary works and in everyday speech, not really thinking about their meaning, because in most cases the original meaning has been lost. An example of such a saying is "hack it in your nose."
"Hack in your nose" is usually advised to someone who has to remember something very well. For a modern person, this expression can cause bewilderment: it is rather difficult to imagine how something can be hacked to death on the nose. Meanwhile, the origin of this expression is in no way connected with the nose that is on the face of a person or on the muzzle of an animal.
The origin of the saying
The nose referred to in this proverb is associated with the verb "to wear." Modern people often carry notebooks with them - paper or electronic, in which they write down something important that they would not like to forget. The people of the Middle Ages also did not particularly rely on their memory when it came to important matters - for example, about debts that have to be paid in the future. But making notes in those days was difficult - after all, most of the population was illiterate, and there was nothing to write on: paper had not yet spread, and parchment was a very expensive material.
People got out of the situation with the help of a simple mnemonic technique based on the psychological mechanism of association: they created a conventional sign, which in itself does not carry any information, but when looking at it, a person remembered why the sign was made. A knot on some piece of clothing or a notch on a wooden stick could act as such a reminder sign.
Such notched sticks were especially convenient as promissory notes. For example, having borrowed 2 sacks of flour from a neighbor, a person made 2 nicks on a stick. In order not to forget about duty, such a stick was constantly carried with them, which is why it was called the "nose".
Thus, the expression "hack to death" originally meant an offer to make a nickname for memory.
Another saying about the nose
The nose - a wooden stick with notches for memory - should not be confused with the other “nose” referred to in the expression “stay with the nose”. It is used in the sense of "leaving with nothing", "not reaching your goal."
However, the etymology of the word "nose" is the same here: "what is worn", "offering." We are talking about money or other material values that were brought to a judge or other government official in order to win him over to his side and achieve a solution to the case in his favor. In modern Russian it is called a bribe, and in pre-Petrine Russia it was called a nose.
Bribery flourished in that era, but still there were honest officials who refused to accept the "nose". About a person who, while trying to give a bribe, met with such an honest person, they said that he "was left with a nose."
