olfactory
adjective
ōl-
Did you know?
No, olfactory is not a noun meaning “a place that makes scents”; for that, you want perfumery, which makes more sense. Olfactory is instead an adjective used to describe things related to one’s sense of smell, that which lets you detect fruit with your snoot, a leek with your beak, Shiraz with your schnozz. Olfactory comes from the Latin word olfacere (“to smell”), which in turn combines two verbs, olēre (“to give off a smell”) and facere (“to do”). It often appears in scientific contexts (as in “olfactory nerves,” the nerves that pass from the nose to the brain and contain the receptors that make smelling possible), but it is occasionally used in less technical writing and speech. The pleasant smell of hot mulled cider, for example, might be considered an “olfactory delight,” depending on the spices and your own sensibilities, of course. As they say, the nose knows.
Examples of olfactory in a Sentence
Kathryn Hopkins, WWD, 18 Feb. 2025
But learning a mummy’s olfactory details wasn’t just for curiosity’s sake—the team’s results, published February 13 in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, could help preserve the relics.
—Andrew Paul, Popular Science, 14 Feb. 2025
Aromatherapy For an olfactory experience matched by a visual one, there is the Tubéreuse (Tuberose) candle by Diptyque Paris.
—Alix Strauss, New York Times, 13 Feb. 2025
Even though silk doesn’t have a scent per se, somehow this fragrance manages to translate the feeling of running your fingers across the finest silk into an olfactory experience.
—Kimberly Wilson, Essence, 12 Feb. 2025
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Cite this Entry
“Olfactory.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/olfactory. Accessed 9 Mar. 2025.
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olfactory
adjective
Medical Definition
olfactory
adjective
ōl-
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