I was drafting a post about "looking down one's nose" when I was distracted, over the weekend, by the slightly early arrival of the grandchild formerly known as the New March Baby. So when I noticed yesterday that Arnold Zwicky had posted about the idiom "look down one's nose" while I was off toasting little Bridget Frances with pink champagne, I thought maybe I'd been scooped.
But no, it was a just a cosmic coincidence. Arnold's post is about the reanalysis of look down one's nose as a verb + particle rather than verb + preposition, giving birth to the novel construction look one's nose down (at). The innovation I'd heard on the radio was a different one: A week ago on "Talk of the Nation," Ken Rudin referred to Rick Santorum's "turn[ing] his nose down" at the idea of higher education for all.
A nice blend, I assume, of turn up one's nose and look down one's nose. And hardly an unlikely one, since turning up one's nose and looking down one's nose are so closely related that the Oxford English Dictionary defines them together: "(b) to turn up one's nose (at): to show disdain or scorn (for); similarly to look down one's nose (at)." Also, turn down all by itself means "reject, refuse," so it may sound more appropriate for a phrase that conveys dismissiveness.
The OED's earliest cite for the turn up version comes from Colley Cibber's 1721 play "The Refusal": "A Man must be nice indeed, that turns up his Nose at a Woman, who has no worse Imperfection, than setting too great a Value upon her Understanding." Its earliest example of the look down variant is two centuries later, from John Galsworthy: "That chap Jolyon's water-colours were on view there. He went in to look down his nose at them -- it might give him some faint satisfaction" (1921). But Google Books easily antedates it to the mid-19th century: "Be very proud, look down your nose, make him a distant bow" ("The Personal Adventures of Our Own Correspondent in Italy," 1852).
Now, I vaguely remember doing Google searches for turn down one's nose (and finding a few hundred), but I don't see my notes, and I'm too tired to do it again. So I will leave the topic with this almost relevant observation from stand-up comedian Tom Cotter: "We say stupid stuff -- 'He looks down his nose at me.' Well, of course, we all look down our nose. If he could look up his nose at you, either he'd be a freak or you'd be a booger."