Parosmia
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A distorted sense of smell, often resulting in the apparent detection of non-existent smells which are mostly unpleasant. countable, uncountable
"Parosmis, from παρα, "male [Latin: ‘badly; wrongly’]," and ὄζω, "oleo, olfacio;" analogously with paracusis and paropsis, and hence preferred to parosmia. The common term among nosologists is anosmia, but this only includes one species of the genus, namely, privation or destitution of smell; which, in fact, is the only one that has hitherto been introduced into nosological systems."
- 2 a disorder in the sense of smell wordnet
Example
More examples"Parosmis, from παρα, "male [Latin: ‘badly; wrongly’]," and ὄζω, "oleo, olfacio;" analogously with paracusis and paropsis, and hence preferred to parosmia. The common term among nosologists is anosmia, but this only includes one species of the genus, namely, privation or destitution of smell; which, in fact, is the only one that has hitherto been introduced into nosological systems."
Etymology
From para- (prefix meaning ‘abnormal’) + -osmia (suffix denoting diseases connected to smelling).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.