Word.ws English Dictionary

olfact

olfact verb: to smell.

Verb

olfact (third-person singular simple present olfacts, present participle olfacting, simple past and past participle olfacted)

  1. (rare, transitive) To smell.
    • There is a Machiavelian plot,
      (Tho' ev'ry nare olfact it not)1663–1678, Samuel Butler, Hudibras

Synonyms of olfact

Forms of olfact

third-person singular presentolfacts
present participleolfacting
past participleolfacted
pastolfacted

Origin of olfact

From Latin olfactus, past participle of olfaciō (“smell”).

Questions about olfact

What does olfact mean?
Olfact means to smell.
What part of speech is olfact?
Olfact is a verb.
What is the past tense of olfact?
The past tense of olfact is olfacted.

Words near olfact in the dictionary

  1. oleylamine
  2. olezarsen
  3. oleïc acid
  4. Oleśnica
  5. olf
  6. olfact
  7. olfactant
  8. olfactants
  9. olfacted
  10. olfactible
  11. olfactic

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: olfact (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “olfact.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/olfact. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.