Odor

//ˈəʊdə// noun

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Any smell, whether fragrant or offensive. US, countable, uncountable

    "Now, I still think that for this box of matches to have escaped the wear of time for immemorial years was a strange, and for me, a most fortunate thing. Yet oddly enough I found here a far more unlikely substance, and that was camphor. I found it in a sealed jar, that, by chance, I supposed had been really hermetically sealed. I fancied at first the stuff was paraffin wax, and smashed the jar accordingly. But the odour of camphor was unmistakable."

  2. 2
    any property detected by the olfactory system wordnet
  3. 3
    A strong, pervasive quality. US, countable, figuratively, uncountable

    "In different parts of the coast different species of animals are accounted sacred, because they are supposed to be animated by the spirits of the dead. Hence monkeys near Fishtown, snakes at Whydah, and crocodiles near Dix Cove live in the odour of sanctity.""

  4. 4
    the sensation that results when olfactory receptors in the nose are stimulated by particular chemicals in gaseous form wordnet
  5. 5
    Esteem. US, figuratively, uncountable
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  1. 6
    Something which produces a scent; incense, a perfume. US, archaic, countable, uncountable

    "On the morowe after the ſaboth / erly in the mornynge / they cam vnto the toumbe and brought the odourſ whych they had prepared / and other wemen wyth them."

Etymology

From Middle English odour, borrowed from Anglo-Norman odour, from Old French odor, from Latin odor. Cognates * Swedish odör (“bad smell”)

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