Odorous

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Releasing a significant scent that can be either enjoyed or reviled
2. Marked by a prominent fragrance that can provoke different emotional responses
3. Emitting a smell that is easily detected by the nose

Etymology: "Odorous" is a plain formation: it combines "odor," the English noun for a smell, with the suffix "-ous," meaning "full of" or "characterized by." Its ancestry runs through Latin, where "odor" (smell) gave rise to the Medieval Latin adjective "odorosus," meaning fragrant or having a smell. English took up the adjective in Middle English, when it was used for things that gave off a noticeable scent, whether pleasant or foul. The word's neutrality is worth noticing. Its core sense is simply "having a smell," with no built-in judgment about whether that smell is good. Today it leans toward unpleasant odors, which is why it often appears in phrases like "odorous fumes," while its more pleasant counterpart "odoriferous" tends to be reserved for fragrances.

Synonyms: fragrant, aromatic, scented, perfumed, redolent

Antonyms: odorless, unscented, foul, stinking, malodorous