specific word for rubbing someone's head with your knuckles (2025)

First of all, I'm sorry if this post is repeated. I didn't find it looking through the dictionary and posts.

I'm looking for the specific translation of "dar un coscorrón" as used in Argentina, meaning clenching your hand into a fist and rubbing someone's head with your knuckles, usually in a playful manner. I've noticed from posts in the Spanish-English forum that "coscorrón" is used also as "smacking someone's head" or "bumping your head against something or someone else's head" in other countries, and that is NOT the usage I'm looking for.

Does anyone know of a specific word or short phrase to describe the action of rubbing someone's head with your knuckles?

Thank you very much in advance, and sorry if this post is repeated. Again, I couldn't find it anywhere else.

Mai

When I was growing up it was called "giving someone a noogie". Bill Murray uses this expression in the film "Meatballs."

I'm surprised to find that it's actually in the Merriam-Webster online dictionary:

Main Entry: noog·ie : the act of rubbing one's knuckles on a person's head so as to produce a mildly painful sensation

JamesM said:

When I was growing up it was called "giving someone a noogie".
I'm surprised to find that it's actually in the Merriam-Webster online dictionary:

Main Entry: noog·ie : the act of rubbing one's knuckles on a person's head so as to produce a mildly painful sensation

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The same expression was used east of the Mississippi. I haven't heard it in a while,
but it was common in colloquial American English a few decades ago.

bibliolept said:

Be assured that noogie is still common parlance.

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Well, I did hear it from an AE speaker just yesterday.

EDIT: Loob and Ewie -- I somehow feel so privileged now

I've not heard of noogie before, but the OED has
Under the definition, which is tagged as US school and college slang, is this helpful quotation

1992 J. STERN & M. STERN Encycl. Pop Culture 437/2 School children learned to give noogies to each other (a 1950s classroom torture of rubbing knuckles over someone else's head, revived by SNL nerds Todd and Lisa).

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The sentiment managed to transform from torture to affection.

(SNL = Saturday Night Live - a US TV show from the late 1970s.)

Loob said:

I don't know it either: I feel quite deprived

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Those who have been noogieted/noogietised feel deprived in a different sense.

Not to be left behind by the OED, Random House Unabridged offers...

a light blow or jab, usually to a person's head, back, or upper arm and accompanied by a twisting motion, with the extended knuckle of the curled-up second or third finger: done as a gesture of affection or painfully as a prank. Also, nuggie, nugie.

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Think of it as a knucklear gouge. I suppose some might pronounce that
as nuke yuh lear.

I don't recall ever seeing a noogie administered as a "gesture of affection".

Thanks, cuchu, for the definition: I remember the gesture now (in particular the arm variant).

But it was meant to *hurt* - at least the way my brother did it...

Can it be done "in a playful manner", to use mai369's words??

Both my brother and I would have

that we were just being playful.
The things nine and twelve year olds do "in a playful manner" may inflict
considerable pain.

It is also used as a verb: To noogie (to execute a noogie on some victim).

I am uncertain of the conjugation, however.

[Not to be mistake for a "nookie" by the way.]

Hi, Ewie, Message 9,

I've survived 69 years without knowing this word.

I was bullied as a boy but no-one ever inflicted this particular pain on me.

Did I have a deprived childhood?

Had this torture not been invented sixty years ago?

Rover

Hello Rover ~ well, I've just tried it out (or rather: I've just had it tried out on me), and I wouldn't feel too deprived ~ it's just like having someone rub their knuckles on your head, full stop. I've seen it being done plenty of times, usually in an affectionate-ish way (like an affectionate punch) but just can't remember

having heard it named before.