Straightforward question. I want to say that I can do a nostril flaring or I can nostril-flare. Googling this pointed to the flare that caused by a disease or kind of that but here I can do it normally so it's a genetic inheritance. Is there a verb word for it in Chinese?
2 Answers
Google Translate: Nostril flaring --> 鼻孔擴張
And this site agrees:
Nasal flaring (鼻孔擴張) occurs when the nostrils widen while breathing. It is often a sign of trouble breathing.
"Nostrils flaring" (鼻孔擴張) is a symptom that happens involuntarily; someone who makes his nostrils widen voluntarily should be called "to flare nostrils" (擴張鼻孔)
Nostrils can also be translated as 鼻翼
emmm, this is really an interesting question. The straightforward translation is "鼻孔扩张". However, I have never heard anyone said that, I guess you would like a more common-used phrase. What I realized is that I never expressed it in mandarin and I can't think of any word conforming to nostril-flare in mandarin.
What an intriguing thing is there is a phrase in my dialect meaning "nostril-flare". The pronunciation is like "xiu bie de". My dialect belongs to Wu Dialect. But I don't know whether each type of Wu Dialect has such an expression.
By the way, I can nostril-flare as well.