But less naïve nose-thumbing would have made "Pride" even more fun.

Such nose-thumbing at Communism's arthritic creed was news enough back then.

Few tales of gleeful nose-thumbing at authority have ever ended in such total defeat.

Often, there is an element of sophisticated nose-thumbing.

The incident was met with boos and nose-thumbing by 50 residents of Marble Hill.

Unfortunately, her actions bring to mind not mature self-revelation but the defiant nose-thumbing of an adolescent.

In most of them, youthful nose-thumbing and a respect for ballet's classical past blend with remarkable smoothness.

And the repeated, unabashed character of his nose-thumbing is encouraging others with nuclear ambitions to think they could get away with it too.

The finale looks like gentle nose-thumbing.

They simply could not have seized the imagination and approval of a mass audience with such open displays of power and nose-thumbing.

The numbers meant to establish Poe as a subversive dude for our times register as pretty juvenile nose-thumbing.

What a nose-thumbing.

They are playing characters named Rosemary and Kevin, another bit of nose-thumbing in the direction of theatrical artifice.

It's a deliberate act of provocation and nose-thumbing to your "conventional thinking" and "bourgeois, materialistic values."

Just as the note in the book had been a nose-thumbing at the court system, a sneering disregard for the sanctity and security of the court-house.

Last week, Alltel took the nose-thumbing another step forward, buying billboards in five cities that appeared to be defaced with graffiti by its rivals.

At such moments, "Wrong-Eyed Jesus" gives off a whiff of European nose-thumbing.

The tongue-in-cheek nose-thumbing of the classical tradition is what gave Dolce & Gabbana's latest offerings their punch.

One consequence, not the most important, is likely to be nose-holding and nose-thumbing on a prodigious scale at next month's local and European Parliament elections.

It is a deliberate nose-thumbing at vapid, mass-produced pilsners, Mr. Calagione said.

There was some self-righteous nose-thumbing to this: occasionally Herb Sandler would testify before Congress against bank practices that outraged him.

People latch onto him as a Braveheart-esque symbol of patriotism, a big fat bit of nose-thumbing towards their erstwhile ideological overlords.

Mr. Watt rarely writes the kinds of anthems, either earnest or nose-thumbing, that have carried grunge and punk-pop to the mass market.

It celebrates recklessness, a nose-thumbing at public bossiness or health & safety dictats, the schoolboyish impulse to shove fingers in sockets.

Coincidentally, two works in the Duchamp tradition of nose-thumbing at traditional art will be auctioned in New York on Thursday.