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What is "odor"

Crossword clues for odor

odor
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
odor
noun
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Neighbors had noticed a foul odor coming from the apartment.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Activated charcoal, spread on a pan like baking soda, also alleviates an odor problem.
▪ Downtown Atlanta is normally an unhurried place where the noontime odor of fried chicken wafts through the thick humidity.
▪ On entering the parish hall, he was surprised to smell the unmistakable odor of chicken noodle soup.
▪ The odor of strong rum made a greasy pass through the room.
▪ The mist was getting heavier; so, too, was the rank odor of damp earth.
▪ The sulfur compounds, which were not further identified, were suspected of causing the onion-like odor toll takers have complained of.
▪ To them, roach spray may simply carry a nasty odor.
▪ You can only imagine how the heat intensified the odors of garbage, compost, and manure.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Odor

Odor \O"dor\ ([=o]"d[~e]r), n. [OE. odor, odour, OF. odor, odour, F. odeur, fr. L. odor; akin to olere to smell, Gr. 'o`zein, Lith. [*u]sti. Cf. Olfactory, Osmium, Ozone, Redolent.] [Written also odour.] Any smell, whether fragrant or offensive; scent; perfume.

Meseemed I smelt a garden of sweet flowers, That dainty odors from them threw around.
--Spenser.

To be in bad odor, to be out of favor, or in bad repute.

Related phrases:
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
odor

c.1300, from Anglo-French odour, from Old French odor "smell, perfume, fragrance" (12c., Modern French odeur) and directly from Latin odor "a smell, a scent" (pleasant or disagreeable), from PIE *od- "to smell" (cognates: Latin olere "emit a smell, to smell of," with Sabine -l- for -d-; Greek ozein "to smell;" Armenian hotim "I smell;" Lithuanian uodziu "to smell").\n

\nGood or bad odor, in reference to repute, estimation, is from 1835. Odor of sanctity (1756) is from French odeur de sainteté (17c.) "sweet or balsamic scent said to be exhaled by the bodies of eminent saints at death or upon disinterment."

Wiktionary
odor

n. 1 Any smell, whether fragrant or offensive; scent; perfume. 2 (context figuratively English) A strong, pervasive quality. 3 (context figuratively lang=en uncountable) esteem; repute.

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WordNet
odor

  1. n. any property detected by the olfactory system [syn: olfactory property, smell, aroma, odour, scent]

  2. the sensation that results when olfactory receptors in the nose are stimulated by particular chemicals in gaseous form; "she loved the smell of roses" [syn: smell, odour, olfactory sensation, olfactory perception]

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Wikipedia
Odor

An odor or odour or fragrance is caused by one or more volatilized chemical compounds, generally at a very low concentration, that humans or other animals perceive by the sense of olfaction. Odors are also commonly called scents, which can refer to both pleasant and unpleasant odors. The terms fragrance and aroma are used primarily by the food and cosmetic industry to describe a pleasant odor, and are sometimes used to refer to perfumes. In contrast, malodor, stench, reek, and stink are used specifically to describe unpleasant odor. The term smell (in its noun form) is used for both pleasant and unpleasant odors.

In the United Kingdom, odour refers to scents in general. In the United States and for many non-native English speakers around the world, odor generally has a negative connotation, as a synonym for stink; on the other hand, scent or aroma are used by those people to indicate "pleasant smells".

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Usage examples of "odor".

Stephanotis, passiflora, tuberose, alamanda, Bougainvillea, and other trailers of gorgeous colors, climb over everything, and make the night heavy with their odors.

If allowed to stand in a test tube, the odor of valeric aldehyde will first be noticed, then that of amyl valerate, and lastly that of valeric acid.

His garments had once been fine, but judging by their worn appearance and the sour odor that rose from them, Alec suspected their owner to be a denizen of the northern Ring.

You see, ambergris is the most effective odor fixative that has ever been found.

She smelled the ammoniac odor of the big beast, even as she plunged, face down, into a tumble of leaf-drift.

She smelled an ammoniac odor, and saw a huge midnight-blue form wide and tall enough to block the corridor.

Aniline when pure is a colorless liquid, possessing a rather ammoniacal odor.

Odier has known a woman who was affected with aphonia whenever exposed to the odor of musk, but who immediately recovered after taking a cold bath.

It was a rough leveling of the debris, upon which several small objects lay carelessly scattered, and at one corner of which a considerable amount of gasoline must have been spilled lately enough to leave a strong odor even at this extreme superplateau altitude.

The flower-beds were edged with box, which diffused around it that dreamy balsamic odor, full of antenatal reminiscences of a lost Paradise, dimly fragrant as might be the bdellium of ancient Havilah, the land compassed by the river Pison that went out of Eden.

The bear passed close enough to my window that I could smell the hot rank odor of her fur, and hear her heavy chuffing breath.

She had lost the odor of chypre now and smelled only of sweet girlish flesh.

Blade noticed what he had never noted before-an odor of chypre about the man.

Her sense of smell, so heightened now that it might have been a new sense altogether, had picked up the coolth of running water off this way, dimmed by the green odor of the grass.

The dark hall, the odor of dead rodents, peculiarly the smell of cosmoline, wetted burned paper.