Odor

How to spell odor

4 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce odor

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does odor mean?

1. nounA distinctive smell, especially one that is strong or unpleasant.

Odor in a sentence

• A faint odor of bleach lingered in the empty kitchen.

• The gym locker room had a stale odor by late afternoon.

Where does odor come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes straight from the Latin noun odor, which simply meant 'a smell' or 'a scent', whether sweet or foul. The Latin root is tied to the verb olere, 'to give off a smell', the same family that gives us 'olfactory'. English took the word in during the 1200s and 1300s through Old French 'odour', which is why British and Canadian writers kept the French-styled 'odour' spelling with the 'u'. American English, following Noah Webster's nineteenth-century reforms that trimmed many such 'u' letters, settled on the plainer 'odor' that mirrors the original Latin form more closely. The spelling trap is purely that missing 'u': writers who read British media often add one, while the American standard ends cleanly in '-or'.

How the word is built

• odor (from Latin odor: smell, scent), unsuffixed American form of the British 'odour'

British and American spelling

Odor is the American spelling. British English spells it odour.