effluvium
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of effluvium
1640–50; < Latin, equivalent to ef- ef- + fluv-, base of fluere to flow ( see effluent) + -ium -ium
Explanation
Effluvium is a smelly gas, vapor, or an exhalation. You wouldn't want to breathe in the effluvium from a cargo ship or you might become ill. Stick to sailing. Not a particularly common word these days, effluvium dates back to the 1600's, meaning "a flowing out of air." Since the effluvium seeping out of the tire factory's chimney was invisible, park officials took months to realize fumes were killing hundreds of birds. The Romans were the first to invent a sewage system, thereby diverting effluvium into the drains and out of the city. Thank you, Romans.
Vocabulary lists containing effluvium
The Vocabulary.com Top 1000
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The Nose Knows: Olfactory Vocabulary
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Latin Love, Vol II: fluere
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Unlike genetic or hormone-driven loss, I had a textbook case of telogen effluvium, or stress shedding.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 9, 2025
It can last three to six months but the silver lining is that telogen effluvium can be reversed.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 9, 2025
Sudden and temporary hair loss has a medical name: telogen effluvium.
From Seattle Times ● Oct. 10, 2022
Once such undisguised hatred is hurled, its effluvium clings, no matter how much is done to wash it away.
From Washington Times ● Jun. 24, 2020
Yes, shadowy: a myth, a phantom: something which they engendered and created whole themselves; some effluvium of Sutpen blood and character, as though as a man he did not exist at all.
From "Absalom, Absalom!" by William Faulkner
One turbine spins in the fiery effluvia of engine exhaust, with temperatures around 1,000 degrees.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 12, 2026
Many Wallingford houses were built to avoid the hellish view of tower effluvia.
From Seattle Times ● Jul. 20, 2023
The Times leader writer, Oliver Kamm, author of Accidence Will Happen: The Non-Pedantic Guide to English, says that the swearing lexicon now draws less from religion and more from body effluvia.
From BBC ● Feb. 26, 2017
Shuttered mining operations let metal-laden effluvia seep into the waterways.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 19, 2017
His senses had not been assailed by any noisome effluvia.
From Ormond, Volume I (of 3) or, The Secret Witness by Brown, Charles Brockden
The reason for the stillness is the neighborhood's proximity to something called the Brio Superfund site, a place that once housed two waste-disposal plants and now contains a witches' brew of toxic effluviums.
From Time Magazine Archive
Boyle's tracts of the years 1673 and 1674 on "effluviums," their "determinate nature," their "strange subtilty," and their "great efficacy," are examples.
From On the magnet, magnetick bodies also, and on the great magnet the earth a new physiology, demonstrated by many arguments & experiments by Gilbert, William
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
