musks

Noun

musk (countable and uncountable, plural musks)

1. A greasy secretion with a powerful odour, produced in a glandular sac of the male musk deer and used in the manufacture of perfumes.
   • Your onely way to make a good pomander, is this. Take an ownce of the pureſt garden mould, clenſed and ſteeped ſeauen daies in change of motherleſſe roſe water, then take the beſt Labdanum, Benioine, both Storaxes, amber greece, and Ciuet, and muſke, incorporate them together, and work them into...1607, [attributed to Thomas Tomkis], Lingva: Or The Combat of the Tongue, and the Five Senses for Superiority. A Pleasant Comœdie., London: Printed by G[eorge] Eld, for Simon Waterson, →OCLC, act IV...
2. A similar secretion produced by the otter and the civet.
3. A synthetic organic compound used as a substitute for the above.
4. The odour of musk.
5. (slang, vulgar) Body odor, especially when aroused or unwashed.
   • I was so excited I could smell my own musk.
6. A musk deer (genus Moschus).

See all 13 meanings of musk