odour

English

Alternative forms

• odor (US)

Etymology

From Middle English odour, borrowed from Anglo-Norman odour, from Old French odor, from Latin odor. Related to Swedish odör (“bad smell”).

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈəʊdə/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈoʊdəɹ/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: (UK) -əʊdə

Noun

odour (countable and uncountable, plural odours)

1. (British spelling) Alternative form of odor
   • 1944 November and December, A Former Pupil, “Some Memories of Crewe Works—II”, in Railway Magazine, page 343:

     So after learning a great deal about iron founding and much more about pike fishing, one regretfully took leave of a shop full of kindly characters and proceeded to a worse lot of odours in the brass foundry.

Derived terms

• body odour, body odor
• deodorant
• deodorise, deodorize
• odoriferous
• odourless

 

Anagrams

• Douro

Middle English

Alternative forms

• odowre, odor, odure, odoure, odyr, oudour, odowr, odir, odur

Etymology

Borrowed from Anglo-Norman odour, from Latin odor.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ɔːˈduːr/, /ɔˈduːr/, /ˈɔːdur/, /ˈɔːdər/

Noun

odour (plural odours)

1. A smell or scent; a nasal sensation (often intrinsic):
   1. A pleasant or appealing smell or scent.
   2. The scent of living matter or substances.
2. (figurative) A sensation or quality; the feeling produced by something.
3. (rare) The power of discerning scents.

Descendants

• English: odour, odor
• Scots: odour

References

• “ō̆dǒur, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-09-01.