nuzzle
verb

- to touch, rub, or press something or someone gently and/or in a way that shows your love, especially with the head or nose, usually with small repeated movements

Cambridge Dictionary

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WORD ORIGIN

The verb “nuzzle” stems from the early 15th century and meant “to bring the nose to the ground” and was reinforced by the Dutch neuzelen “to poke with the nose”.

The modern affectionate, intimate sense is from the 1590s, possibly influenced by “nestle” or “nursle”.

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“NUZZLING ROBOTS”

A team of roboticists from Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, ETH Zurich, and University of Copenhagen have developed HuggieBot 3.0, a third-generation hugging robot that can operate autonomously.

“We investigated robot responses to four human intra-hug gestures: Holding, rubbing, patting, and squeezing”, the team explains in the abstract to the resulting paper.

The robot includes an inflatable torso with pressure sensors and a custom 3D-printed head with a desktop computer, a depth-sensing camera, and a display. The team also created a list of 11 commandments that they believe all hugging robots should follow to be effective, including being soft, warm, and offering hugs in response to someone walking by.

Nuzzling robots can’t be far away!

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SYNONYMS

- to embrace or lie closely together

burrow against, canoodle, caress, clasp, clasp/press to one’s bosom, clinch, cling (to), clutch, coll, cradle, crush, cuddle, cuddle up, cuddle up to, draw close, embosom, embrace, enbosom, enclasp, enfold, enfold someone in one’s arms, entwine oneself around, envelop, fold in arms, fondle, hold close (fondly), hold in one’s arms, hold on to, hold tight, huddle against, huddle up, hug, keep close, lie close (to), lock in one’s arms, nestle, NUZZLE (up to), press up against, snoozle, snuggle, spoon, take in arms, wrap (around)

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SMUGGLE OWAD into an English conversation, say something like:

"The Wild Immersion is a project intended to raise awareness of – and perhaps even save – the natural world, via 360-degree virtual reality wildlife documentaries. Introduced by Goodall, they really are immersive: you’re practically NUZZLING into the pandas’ fur and flying with the flamingos over an African lake." 

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