Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Of, relating to, or contributing to the sense of smell.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Making or causing to smell; effecting or otherwise pertaining to olfaction; having the sense of smell or providing for the exercise of that faculty: as, an olfactory organ. The olfactory nerves, present in nearly all vertebrates, are slender filaments in man, about twenty in number, arising from the under surface of the olfactory bulb, or terminal part of the rhinencephalon or olfactory lobe. The lobe is primitively hollow, being a tubular process whose cavity is continuous with that of the prosencephalic ventricle, and it is of much greater relative size in the lower than in the higher vertebrates. In the latter the olfactory lobes are reduced to a pair of solid flattened bands, like bits of tape, and improperly receive the name of olfactory nerves, which properly applies only to the numerous filaments arising from the bulbous end of the so-called olfactory nerves, penetrating the cribriform plate of the ethmoid bone through numerous minute foramina, and ramifying through the Schneiderian mucous membrane of the nose. Also
olfactive . See cuts under Elasmobranchii, encephalon, nasal, and Petromyzontidæ. - n. The organ of smell; the nose as an olfactory organ: usually in the plural.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. (Physiol.) Of, pertaining to, or connected with, the sense of smell
- n. An olfactory organ; also, the sense of smell; -- usually in the plural.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. of or relating to olfaction
Etymologies
- Latin olfactorius, from olfactus, present participle of olfaciō ("I sniff"), from oleō + faciō. (Wiktionary)
- Latin olfactōrius, used to sniff at, from olfactus, past participle of olfacere, to smell : olēre, to smell + facere, to do; see fact. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Some interesting things about our sense of smell: According to wikipedia, it is our accessory olfactory system (as opposed to the main olfactory system) that smells the fluid-phase chemicals.”
Homage to Olfaction « California Life: Better Than Happy Hour
“In the first study to examine living nerve cells from patients with psychiatric disease, scientists from the Monell Chemical Senses Center, the University of Pennsylvania, and collaborating institutions report altered nerve cell function in olfactory receptor neurons from patients with bipolar disorder.”
“Similar to a visuospatial sketchpad where the brain briefly stores images, this function can be likened to an olfactory flacon (the French word for flask, often used to describe a vessel for perfume), where the brain briefly stores odors.”
“a gene encoding a transneuronal tracer in olfactory sensory neurons.”
“Probably carcinogenic, but the olfactory was the sense most closely linked to memory, so it was worth it for the nostalgia hit.”
“In the mammalian nose, smelling takes place in tissue called the olfactory epithelium.”
“It does seem to have, it's so rare, that it's hard to say that there's a characteristic pattern, where, you know, some people may actually sort of get it into their nose and subsequently sort of travels along a nerve called the olfactory nerve, all the way back into their brain.”
“For a long time, it has been known that the olfactory receptor cells are located far up in the nose, and that they send their thin neural processes through small canals in the bone directly to the part of the brain called the olfactory bulb.”
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2004 - Presentation Speech
“These cells, called olfactory receptor neurons, are located just inside the nose, and are similar in many ways to cells within the brain, but are easier and safer to get to.”
Mind Hacks: Studying the nose to understand bipolar disorder
“Probably car cinogenic, but the olfactory was the sense most closely linked to memory, so it was worth it for the nostalgia hit.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘olfactory’.
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4087 more...
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Psychology
Chapter 1
rigorous, occurrence, maze, divers, intellectual, expansion, all in all, sensation, introspection, radical, orientation, nurture and 174 more...
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A Rarefaction of Factoids
List of genuine words and phrases containing the string fact-, -fact-, or -fact. Beginning with ventifact and stupefaction.
ventifact, stupefaction, fact, factoid, rarefaction, unsatisfactory, satisfactory, tumefaction, surfactant, artifact, benefactor, benefaction and 142 more...
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GRE Barron's 800
abate, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abject, abjure, abscission, abscond, abstemious, abstinence, abysmal, accretion and 787 more...
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Naresh_Special
portent, organically, malicious, sham, olfactory, vertebrates, protuberance, sensilla, flagitious, pleonastic, exiguous, wayward and 102 more...
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big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6691 more...
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maygra
apropos, advantageous, perception, discombobulated, adumbrate, apogee, perihelion, mortmain, solitudinous, mediastinus, asumbrative, traveler and 498 more...
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ICE
quincunx, adoxography, panjundrum, breloque, surd, scripturient, rousant, favrile, embouchure, aquarelle, griffonage, sussultatory and 234 more...
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Just 'cause I like 'em, O
opacity, opaline, olfactory, orthoepy, orthoepy, oleaginous, obloquy, oasitic, obtrude, orthotic, overweening, ostinato and 125 more...
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amagnano's Words
truculent, churlish, antipathy, sociopathy, loquacious, disheveled, pouilly-fuisse, enamored, marked, assuage, ascetic, pagan and 190 more...
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Morthalion's Words
supercilious, kvetch, kvass, splurge, erroneous, pugnacious, macabre, gauche, conglomerate, abyss, paraphernalia, kleptomania and 285 more...
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cindywrites's Words
chiaroscuro, mollycoddle, feckless, evocative, provocative, invocation, beckon, allay, becalm, console, lull, soothe and 479 more...
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eggplantia5's Words
scintillate, marvel, cranberry, oscillate, triumph, bamboozle, grimace, magical, book, hexagon, cipher, compendium and 2727 more...
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olfacto-
smell
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anotherfailedattempt's Words
kakistocracy, conflagration, pollyanna, equanimity, punctillious, obstreperous, ribald, belligerent, truculent, verbose, lachrymose, onanism and 278 more...
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Moby-Dick
Interesting words and usages.
hypo, spile, hunks, grapnel, squitchy, skrimshander, monkey jacket, direful, grego, wrapall, dreadnaught, bosky and 158 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for olfactory.
yarb Others having broken the stems of their pipes almost short off at the bowl, were vigorously puffing tobacco-smoke, so that it constantly filled their olfactories.
- Melville, Moby-Dick, ch. 91 Jul 28, 2008
uselessness Why do new factories smell better than old factories? Feb 15, 2007