Word of the Day

Friday August 14, 2009

malodorous [mal-OH-duhr-uhs]

adjective

In his long-past days as a caddy, the CEO was on more than one occasion commissioned to retrieve golf balls from remote locations. Once, at the insistence of a customer who had recently purchased a dozen expensive balls -- and had them monogrammed -- the young CEO waded waist-deep into a brackish and malodorous water hazard to search for one of the errant treasures.

D.R. Bahlman, "Teeing off, business not a good mix", The Berkshire Eagle, Jul 27, 2009
Increased nitrogen, which the association says correlates with the plant's opening seven years ago, leads to water quality impairments such as low oxygen, which fish need to breathe, "excessive aquatic plant growth, and malodorous conditions," Shanahan said in testimony to DEP.

Robert Knox, "Waste plan for studio a concern; Plymouth", Boston Globe, Jul 23, 2009
His incredible untidiness, his addiction to music at strange hours, his occasional revolver practice within doors, his weird and often malodorous scientific experiments, and the atmosphere of violence and danger which hung around him made him the very worst tenant in London.

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (1859 – 1930) A British author who wrote the Sherlock Holmes stories. The Adventure of the Dying Detective (1913)

Origin of the Word

Malodorous, approximately 1850, derives from Latin mal- "bad" + odorous from odor, "smell."