Boogers
Nose picking (rhinotillexis) is the act of extracting dried nasal mucus from the nostrils with one's finger. In Western cultures, performing this act in public is generally considered to be socially deviant; parents and pediatricians have historically tried to prevent development of the habit and attempt to break it if already established. The practice is nearly universal.
The pieces of extracted nasal debris are known as boogers in American English and as bogeys in British English (although these are slang terms to be avoided in polite discourse) and one common way of disposing of them is to eat them (a practice known as mucophagy), although there is a social stigma against it.
Parents currently, and historically, have often discouraged children from picking their noses (despite nearly all of them covertly engaging in the practice themselves) by scare tactics such as telling their children that the habit could lead to their finger getting stuck in their nose, oversized noses, Santa Claus not bringing these children gifts, or visits from a "snot monster". The taboo against nose-picking is centuries old: The Lytille Childrenes Lytil Boke (The Little Children's Little Book), a children's etiquette book from the fifteenth century, includes the admonition: "Pyke notte thyne errys nothyr thy nostrellys" (Don't pick your ears nor nostrils).
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