odor

Noun

odor (countable and uncountable, plural odors)

1. (US) Any smell, whether fragrant or offensive.
   • Now, I still think that for this box of matches to have escaped the wear of time for immemorial years was a strange, and for me, a most fortunate thing. Yet oddly enough I found here a far more unlikely substance, and that was camphor. I found it in a sealed jar, that, by chance, I supposed had...1895 May 29, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, chapter X, in The Time Machine: An Invention, London: William Heinemann, →OCLC
   • Both chemicals are solid oxidizers in granular form and have a chlorine odor. […] Plant 12 also stored super sacks of bromochloro-5,5-dimethylimidazolidine-2,4-dione (BCDMH), which is a granular solid oxidizer with a halogen odor that, in addition to chlorine gas and hydrogen chloride, can also...2024 November, “Chemical Decomposition, Fire, and Toxic Gas Release at Bio-Lab, Inc.”, in U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation...

   Synonyms:

   scent, perfume, flair, smell, odour

2. (US, figuratively) A strong, pervasive quality.
   • In different parts of the coast different species of animals are accounted sacred, because they are supposed to be animated by the spirits of the dead. Hence monkeys near Fishtown, snakes at Whydah, and crocodiles near Dix Cove live in the odour of sanctity."1911, James George Frazer, The Golden Bough, volume 8, page 287
3. (US, figuratively, uncountable) Esteem.

   Synonyms:

   esteem, repute

4. (US, archaic) Something which produces a scent; incense, a perfume.
   • On the morowe after the ſaboth / erly in the mornynge / they cam vnto the toumbe and brought the odourſ whych they had prepared / and other wemen wyth them.1526, [William Tyndale, transl.], The Newe Testamẽt […] (Tyndale Bible), [Worms, Germany: Peter Schöffer], →OCLC, The Gospell off S. Luke xxiiij:[1], folio cxvii, recto