Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Having or emitting fragrance; aromatic.
- adj. Suggestive; reminiscent: a campaign redolent of machine politics.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Having or diffusing a sweet scent; giving out an odor; odorous; smelling; fragrant: often with of.
Wiktionary
- adj. fragrant or aromatic; having a sweet scent
- adj. having the smell of the article in question.
- adj. suggestive or reminiscent
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Diffusing odor or fragrance; spreading sweet scent; scented; odorous; smelling; -- usually followed by
of .
WordNet 3.0
- adj. serving to bring to mind
- adj. having a strong pleasant odor
- adj. (used with `of' or `with') noticeably odorous
Etymologies
- Middle English, from Old French, from Latin redolēns, redolent-, present participle of redolēre, to smell : re-, red-, re- + olēre, to smell.
Examples
“Enter the houbara bustard, with a name redolent of leather-jacketed young men gunning their motorcycles and a courtship display to match.”
“Harrison's new collection, "The Farmer's Daughter" - a title redolent of Merle Haggard or off-color barroom jokes or both, depending on your referents - contains three stories that feature, among their sprawling casts, several lusty adolescent boys (including one with a clubfoot and one who's a werewolf); an aged rancher, who, at 73, on his "last conscious day" of life, gingerly gropes a”
“Unfortunately, Johnson's thunder was silenced -- his reign curtailed -- by the guns and bombs of Vietnam and a challenge from Robert Kennedy, another name redolent of tragedy.”
Kennedys' dark tragedies never eclipsed their lofty lunar glow
“And it is indeed true that the mechanism which supported the 'Estado de India' nourished a very unique place, one which internalised the life-affirming concept behind a word redolent of the very essence of”
“The constitution of the League was termed by Mr. Wilson a Covenant, a word redolent of biblical and puritanical times, which accorded well with the motives that decided him to prefer Geneva to Brussels as the seat of the League, and to adopt other measures of a supposed political character.”
“His mother was MARY ARDEN, a name redolent of old poetry and romance.”
Shakespeare His Life Art And Characters
“Kinect - a name redolent of cords, cables, USB ports.”
“It's called the "Cadillac tax," a name redolent of corporate executives cackling in their Escalades over their cushy benefits.”
“Removal" or "transfer" of a people is a word redolent of the Nazi era, for it is what the Nazis did to the Jews of Europe.”
“Since a variety of incentives have been unavailing, more muscular measures -- perhaps "surgical strikes," a phrase redolent of the McNamara mentality -- are contemplated.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘redolent’.
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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 4084 more...
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Words
phantasmagoria, eviscerate, avast, simulacrum, varicose, oblique, gestalt, ersatz, vernal, vivace, stellate, synecdoche and 314 more...
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SAT Words
But only the ones that I don't already know.
abase, abash, abominate, abstruse, acclivity, accolade, accost, adroit, adulate, adulterate, adumbrate, affray and 241 more...
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cicatrix
scar tissue
minatory, naira, Cluniac, embracive, prolix, hierophant, timorous, adduce, veracious, dysphoric, sang-froid, vitiate and 414 more...
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just neat
insolent, redolent, clammy, chunder, berate, vainqueur, neotony, milquetoast, semprini, twaddle, plethora, enteron and 28 more...
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vocabulous
autarkic, ineluctable, productivist, teleology, imperious, Balkanization, phytosanitary, inedia, algesia, protean, tenebrous, libretto and 10 more...
michaelt42 Redolent and other words connect us to our sensory memories. Proust explored this space; so did Dickens and others who explored the pollution of the 19th century in terms of the sights, smells and sounds of the urban environment; Keats described a vintage "Tasting of Flora and the country green,/Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!" - though his imagery is so powerful that you don't at first notice how he makes tasting do duty for other forms of sensory perception implied by his words, viz hearing, seeing and smelling. Olfaction seems to be the most powerful of these, which perhaps explains why the meaning of redolent has become extended.
Dec 4, 2011
Noelle Knight "She had left me a little note, too, on an old envelope that already held the beginnings of my shopping list. It said, 'I'll call you later. T'--a terse note, and not exactly redolent of sisterly love."-Dead as a Doornail, by Charlaine Harris May 18, 2011
milosrdenstvi "Our new cars, redolent of pine, spruce, and other all-natural scents..." Aug 18, 2008