Why do people sneeze through their mouths?

[Guest Someguy1]

Hi, I have a question about how we sneeze. When I sneeze, almost all the air comes out through my mouth. I've never understood why this is, since the sneezes are caused by something in my nose. I also don't understand why the tickle's gone after, since whatever made me sneeze hasn't been blown out. If the sneeze was caused by something in my mouth, then it would work great. Since it isn't, this doesn't seem to make any sense. But it also seems that most people sneeze this way too. How do you sneeze, and why do you guys think most people sneeze through their mouths?

[chui]

I do that too, but mine is because I'm a bit scare of anything coming out of my nose. I had that one incident we all have as children, and yeah... haven't sneezed normally since. I don't let ANY air come out of my nose.

[count tiszula]

Hmm...after a recent detailed study of published sneezes, mostly on YouTube, I have concluded that at least among the girly tendency, the classic sneeze as represented by ATISHOO is still commonest, and in fact this denotes a sneeze where the mouth starts open, to accommodate inhalation, but then closes or half closes so that the girly CHOO is produced between the teeth. So in fact the latter part of the exhalation is redirected into the nose to perform the original function of expelling the tickliness therefrom.

The answer to the question posed is that amongst the masculine tendency, or indeed those ladies who have more powerful sneezes,it becomes impossible to close the mouth correctly because of the sheer force of the sneeze. Some of the exhalation must find its way out nasally, though. I think that some of our younger members have reported that , presumably as their lungs grow to maturity, they have had to change their sneeze because it has become too powerful to emit through the nose without actual pain. I don't know if anyone out there has recently experienced this...?

A literary account of the phenomenon is found in "He went out for a rhine" by the great Robert Graves; the narrator describes attempting to sneeze through his nose but being a boy having such a powerful sneeze that it actually knocks him out...

[Jorm]

I've always figured it was simply because coming from the lungs, the exhale of air gets to your mouth before your nose. Plus, in my experience, it's often painful to sneeze entirely through your nose.

[atchoum]

The answer to the question posed is that amongst the masculine tendency, or indeed those ladies who have more powerful sneezes,it becomes impossible to close the mouth correctly because of the sheer force of the sneeze. Some of the exhalation must find its way out nasally, though. I think that some of our younger members have reported that , presumably as their lungs grow to maturity, they have had to change their sneeze because it has become too powerful to emit through the nose without actual pain. I don't know if anyone out there has recently experienced this...?

..

Another astute observation from the Count. The explanation does seem true: the ATISHOO sneeze seems much more common in women than in men, mature men in particular.

But there seems to me to be another difference, and that is of age, but which doesn't correspond to physical maturity. Very often males in their late teens and early twenties still go on sneezing with the mouth shut part of the time, and it's men in their forties or so who have the entirely glottal sneeze. I have often noticed that you can guess the age of the sneezer by the sound of the sneeze, though I am sometimes quite wrong.

I don't suppose the Count would have paid so much attention to men sneezing, but maybe the same thing happens to women too and I just haven't noticed it.