odour

English

Noun

odour (countable and uncountable, plural odours)

  1. (British spelling) Alternative spelling of odor.
    • 1944 November and December, A Former Pupil, “Some Memories of Crewe Works—II”, in Railway Magazine, page 343:
      So after learning a great deal about iron founding and much more about pike fishing, one regretfully took leave of a shop full of kindly characters and proceeded to a worse lot of odours in the brass foundry.

Derived terms

Anagrams

Middle English

Alternative forms

Etymology

Borrowed from Anglo-Norman odour, from Latin odor.

Pronunciation

  • IPA(key): /ɔːˈduːr/, /ɔˈduːr/, /ˈɔːdur/, /ˈɔːdər/

Noun

odour (plural odours)

  1. A smell or scent; a nasal sensation (often intrinsic):
    1. A pleasant or appealing smell or scent.
    2. The scent of living matter or substances.
  2. (figurative) A sensation or quality; the feeling produced by something.
  3. (rare) The power of discerning scents.

Descendants

  • English: odour, odor
  • Scots: odour

References