Q: I used to consider “odoriferous” a barbarous lengthening of “odiferous.” I was in my 30s when I deigned to look it up and discovered that the shortening “odiferous” was the barbarism. Pride goeth …
A: You’ll be surprised to hear this, but “odoriferous” and “odiferous” showed up in English around the same time in the late 15th century, and both adjectives have appeared in writing ever since. The longer form is recognized now by more standard dictionaries, but neither is very common.
Interestingly, both “odoriferous” and “odiferous” originally meant pleasant smelling, but the odor can now either be pleasant or unpleasant, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.
The OED, an etymological dictionary, says the two terms originally described something “that bears or diffuses a pleasant scent; sweet-smelling; fragrant.” In later use, Oxford adds, they describe something “that has or emits a (pleasant or unpleasant) odour; strong-smelling; odorous.”
Some standard American dictionaries suggest the odor is usually unpleasant. American Heritage, for example, defines “odoriferous” as “having or giving off an odor, especially a strong or unpleasant one,” and gives this example: “an odoriferous bag of garbage.”
A search with Google’s Ngram Viewer, which compares words and phrases in digitized books, indicates that “odorous” appears more often than either “odoriferous” or “odiferous,” and specific adjectives like “fragrant” and “smelly” are even more popular.
The OED describes “odiferous” as a shortening of “odoriferous.” The two adjectives ultimately come from the classical Latin odorifer (sweet-smelling, fragrant). The dictionary’s earliest citation for “odoriferous” is from an English translation of an ancient Greek historical work:
“Such affluent abundaunce of so odoriferous spices Dame Nature hath accumylated and enriched theym with all.” From Bibliotheca Historica (circa 1487), John Skelton’s translation of Βιβλιοθήκη Ἱστορική, by the first-century historian known as Diodorus Siculus (Diodorus of Sicily).
The OED’s first citation for “odiferous,” which the dictionary dates at sometime before 1500, is from “The Churl and the Bird,” John Lydgate’s translation of a French poem: “His smel Þt ben so swete and so odeferus.” The shortening was spelled “odeferus” and “odyferous,” as well as “odiferous,” in the 1500s.
Lydgate’s translation was first published by William Caxton around 1478, but the OED cites a paper that suggests the passage was among eight stanzas added later (“Lydgate’s ‘The Churl and the Bird,’ ” by R. H. Bowers, Modern Language Notes, February 1934).
In the late 16th century, “odoriferous” took on a figurative sense, which the OED defines as “pleasing; agreeable; good.” The earliest citation uses the term in a legal sense:
“That which was in youre lawe, cleare, nete, precious, and odoriferous.” From The Familiar Epistles of Sir Anthony of Gueuara, Edward Hellowes’s translation, believed written around 1575, of Epístolas Familiares (1539), by Antonio de Guevara, a Spanish bishop and royal chronicler to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.
However, the dictionary says the figurative sense is “now (usually): unpleasant, disgusting,” as in this citation from a movie review in Newsday, Feb. 2, 1990: “ ‘The whole operation stank like rotten eggs,’ says the narrator early in ‘Dog Tags.’ The whole movie’s not as odoriferous as that line would suggest, but it sure is an odd one.”
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