One of the mysteries of the English language finally explained.
Having or giving off an odour.‘a dark and odorous cave’
foul-smelling, evil-smelling, smelly, stinking, reeking, reeky, malodorous, pungent, acrid, fetid, rankfragrant, scented, perfumed, aromatic, balmy, tangy, redolentView synonyms
- ‘According to the manufacturer, newater is clearer, less odorous and less bacterial than the water people get from the Public Utilities Board.’
- ‘I am not sure if all dumps are this smelly - I know that all dumps are odorous - but it was stinky.’
- ‘The afternoon we went there it was at its hottest and most odorous.’
- ‘They spend most of the year cramped in dark, often odorous conditions, carrying the full weight of our bodies.’
- ‘And where would they keep the odorous billy-goat until he was needed for the next session?’
- ‘‘Comparisons’, one of Shakespeare's finest word-muddlers tell us, ‘are odorous.’’
- ‘It was a Naples of the north, ‘a picturesque, odorous, inconvenient, old - fashioned town’.’
- ‘But there are other companies in the area dealing with odorous products.’
- ‘So you can imagine my surprise when I open the door to find two odorous men, half-heartedly mumbling that they're here to ‘move me’.’
- ‘But what happens to these odorous, spring-laden behemoths?’
- ‘It's worth the odorous torture because the need to travel runs through your veins.’
- ‘Should the turkey spray you with an odorous substance after you kill it, you didn't kill a turkey.’
- ‘I did not go to the loo once - I drank only a litre of water, when I got home my pee was dark brown and odorous.’
- ‘In one such pathway, binding of odorous molecules to their receptors activates G olf, a GTP-binding protein.’
Late Middle English: from Latin odorus ‘fragrant’ (from odor ‘odour’) + -ous.
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