Anosmia

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /æˈnɒzmiə/

Definitions

1. Complete inability to perceive odors through the nose, whether resulting from nasal obstruction, olfactory nerve damage, or dysfunction of smell receptors in the epithelium
2. Loss of the ability to detect or perceive smell through damage to olfactory nerves, nasal passages, or sensory receptors
3. Complete absence of olfactory sensation caused by impairment of the nasal sensory system or neural pathways responsible for detecting odors

Etymology: Anosmia is a modern scientific coinage, built in New Latin from two Greek elements: the privative prefix "an-", meaning "without," and "osmē," meaning "smell." The Greek root survives in other English terms, such as "osmosis" and "osmic," which are unrelated in meaning but share the same ancestry. The formation is transparent: the prefix attaches to the stem "osmi-" (from "osmē") to name the absence of a sense of smell. Medical writers adopted this pattern much as they built other clinical terms on classical roots, so the word describes a condition rather than naming something ancient physicians recognised under this label. Because the word is a deliberate construction from Greek parts, its meaning stays fixed to the loss of smell itself. The absence can have different causes, from a blocked nasal passage to damage to the olfactory nerve or to the receptor cells in the nasal lining, but the term covers all of them.

Synonyms: loss of smell, olfactory impairment