What is "parosmia"

n. A distorted sense of smell, often resulting in phantom, non-existent, and mostly unpleasant, smells.

Parosmia, from the Greek < para + osmi, also known as troposmia (Gk.) or cacosmia, (Gk.) is an olfactory dysfunction that is characterized by the inability of the brain to properly identify an odor's "natural" smell. What happens instead, is that the natural odor is transcribed into what is most often described as an unpleasant aroma, typically a "'burned,' 'rotting,' 'fecal,' or 'chemical' smell." There are instances, however, of pleasant odors. This is more specifically called euosmia (Gk.).

Parosmia is a genus of moths of the Noctuidae family.