In the very end of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode "On the Nose" (~1957), the main woman calls her horse race bookie on the telephone and places a bet:
Well, I'd like to put two dollars on Washington Flyer! On the nose!
What does "on the nose" mean in this context? None of the Wiktionary definitions seem to match whatsoever: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/on_the_nose
Does it possibly have something to do with the race horse's literal nose? I remember some context where a race horse won by literally putting its head forward, so that the nose reached the goal before the others, which all seemed to finish at the same time to the naked eye, so maybe it has something to do with this? (It was only revealed by looking at the "finish line footage" after the fact.)
Best Answer
The character is probably confusing "on the nose" with "by a nose", which means to win by a slim margin. But no one bets on that, they just bet on the position that the horse comes in (first, second, third).
"on the nose" normally means "precisely" or "exactly", so I suspect she's using this to mean that the horse should be specifically the winner, not one of the other positions you can bet on. I can't think of any other possible interpretation.