Eskimo kissing Eskimo kissing An Eskimo kiss, also called nose kiss or nose rub, is the act of pressing the tip of one's nose against another's nose usually interpreted as a friendly greeting gesture in various cultures. When early explorers of the Arctic first witnessed Inuit nose rubbing as a greeting behavior, they dubbed it "Eskimo kissing". The Eskimo kiss was used as an intimate greeting by the Inuit who, when they meet outside, often have little except their nose and eyes exposed. The Eskimo kiss is employed by the Inuit as a traditional greeting called a "kunik". A "kunik" is a
Eskimo–Aleut languages have obligatory verbal agreement with agent and patient in transitive clauses, and there are special suffixes used for this purpose in subordinate clauses, which makes these languages, like most in the North Pacific, highly "complement deranking". At the end of a word there can be one of a small number of clitics with meanings such as "but" or indicating a polar question. Phonologically, the Eskimo–Aleut languages resemble other language families of northern North America (Na-Dene and Tsimshianic) and far-eastern Siberia (Chukotko-Kamchatkan). There are usually only three vowels—, , —though some Yup'ik dialects also have . All Eskimo–Aleut languages lack ejectives,