Osphresiology

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The scientific study of the sense of smell and olfaction in humans and animals
2. A field of research focused on understanding how organisms perceive and interpret odors
3. An area of study concerning the biological and psychological mechanisms of smelling

Etymology: Osphresiology is a modern scientific coinage, not an ancient term, and it was built from Greek roots. The base is "osphrēsis," the Greek word for smelling or the sense of smell, which comes from "osphraomai," meaning "to smell." The suffix "-logy" comes from "logos," meaning word, reason, or study, so the whole word literally means "the study of smelling." The term belongs to the scientific vocabulary of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when physicians and naturalists coined Greek-based names for branches of knowledge. Its usage is specialised and rare, and it mostly appears in discussions of the sense of smell in medicine and biology. Like many such coinages, it was formed deliberately from classical elements rather than inherited from ancient Greek writers, who did not have a word for a field of study devoted to smell.