“Odor” … “malodorous” … fine. But not “odorous” but “odoriferous”.
Any idea why that “ifer” gets tossed in there?
And as an aside, if something smell great can we say “Gee gang, that smells oderriffic!!”
Etymonline says:
So the “ifer” means “bearing,” as in “odor-bearing.”
Right. Just as a coniferous tree bears, and leaves, cones, an odoriferous thing bears and leaves its odor.
“Odorous” is also a word, without so threatening an implication.
Thanks!
And different “fer” than the iron one … is an iron mine feriferous?
Technically, the “-fer” means “bearing,” while the “-i-” is a connecting vowel. “-fer” seems to prefer “i” as its combining vowel; I thought originally it was because Latin odor was third declension, but that doesn’t seem to be why.
The irregular Latin verb ferre, to carry or bear has principal ferro, ferrere, tuli, latus. So transfer and translate have the same roots: carry across. The “i” is just a connective.
Huh. Here I thought it was always “odiferous,” but I guess that is a shortened variant spelling of “odoriferous.” The more you know!
Likewise the word “aquifer”, and the name “Lucifer”.
The same place as the “ion” in “Congressional.”
Confer/collate
Prefer/prelate
Refer/relate
Transfer/translate
Offer/oblate???
Dang. Other than it actually has two "r"s it is.
When is “odorous” preferred to “odoriferous”/“odiferous”? Or what different implications do they have? Peremensoe states the former is less threatening in implication but I am not sure if that is it.
Look up a bunch of actual-usage examples of each and see if they don’t largely conform. “Odorous” just means a smell. “Odoriferous” means a more insinuative, persistent smell.
That’s the thing - in actual usage I cannot recall seeing or hearing “ordorous” used and have heard “odoriferous” and more commonly “odiferous” in both foul and pleasing actual smell contexts. True, more commonly “fragrant” will be used for a pleasing smell but something pleasing but very strong will be odiferous/odoriferous.
Googling for actual use is not helping me much. Okay a Whitman quote with “odorous” in reference to flowers, but using Whitman as a guide seems ill-advised.
Not saying you are wrong, just not so sure it is right. It does not seem to be clear. There is this for example.
It’s from Latin ferre, to carry or bear.
And Christopher.
Technically, that’s the Greek cognate, and in Ancient Greek (cite) would have been /p[sup]h[/sup]εr/ (so sounding like English “pear” with a rolled r) rather than /fεr/ as in Latin (like English “fair” with a rolled r).
[NB: I’m not entirely sure about that /ε/]
An oblate offers himself to the service of God…?
From the meaning of the “-ferous” suffix described upthread, I infer (!) the following:
“odorous” means a thing stinks. (I see “malodorous” more often than “odorous”.)
“odiferous” means a thing stinks so intensely that it’s going to transfer its stink to adjacent things.
Another example of the root: luminiferous, meaning “light-carrying”, is a word familiar to anyone who knows a bit about the history of physics.
Good call on the p[sup]h[/sup]. The epsilon vowel would have been /e/ in the Ancient Greek pronunciation. /p[sup]h[/sup]er/- It derives from the same Proto-Indo-European root that gave us Latin ferō and English to bear.