Deodorant

How to spell deodorant

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce deodorant

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does deodorant mean?

1. nounA substance applied to the body to prevent or mask unpleasant smells, especially from perspiration.

Deodorant in a sentence

• He packed a travel-sized deodorant for the weekend trip.

• The unscented deodorant suited her sensitive skin.

Where does deodorant come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word is a fairly modern coinage built entirely from Latin parts. The prefix de- carried the sense of removing or reversing, and the root odor was the ordinary Latin noun for a smell or scent, the same root that survives in 'odour' and 'odorous'. The suffix -ant comes from the Latin present participle ending -antem, used to mark a thing that performs an action, just as it does in 'lubricant' and 'disinfectant'. Put together the word literally describes a substance that takes the smell away, and it entered English in the 1860s as commercial products to mask body odour began to appear. A useful spelling note: although British English keeps the 'u' in the related word 'odour', the international and commercial spelling 'deodorant' has no 'u', so the trap is resisting the urge to write 'deodourant'.

How the word is built

• de- (removal, reversal)
• odor (smell, scent)
• -ant (noun/adjective suffix denoting an agent or substance that acts)