Word of the Day
olfaction
noun
the act of smelling.
Why the Museum of Science chose olfaction
Have you ever had a whiff of a holiday dinner before it’s finished cooking? We wanted to know how you recognize that delicious smell. To find out about olfaction and its relationship with memory, watch this video from award-winning science communicator Maynard Okereke, better known as the Hip Hop M.D.
More about olfaction
Olfaction contains two Latin roots: ol-, “to smell,” and fact-, “to make, do.” Ol- is a variation of od-, which is found in odor and deodorant. The change from d to l happened with several Latin words over time, which is also how the older word dingua, “tongue, speech,” evolved into Classical Latin lingua, as in bilingual, linguistics, and linguine—yes, the tongue-shaped pasta. Olfaction was first recorded in English in the 1840s.
EXAMPLE OF OLFACTION USED IN A SENTENCE
The farmer found that her pigs didn’t need any training to help hunt truffles because they had a natural passion for olfaction.
FUN FACT ABOUT OLFACTION
Humans have about six million olfactory receptors in their noses. Dogs have 300 million, which explains why their sniffers are better! Learn more fun facts at the Museum of Science.
dolma
noun
a dish of tomatoes, green peppers, vine leaves, or eggplants stuffed with a mixture of meat, rice, and spices.
More about dolma
Dolma, “a dish of stuffed vegetables,” is a loanword from Turkish, in which dolma means “something filled, filling.” Turkish dolma, in turn, comes from the verb dolmak, “to stuff, fill, be full.” Though it is spoken in Europe, Turkish belongs not to the Indo-European language family (along with English, Greek, and Hindi) but rather to the Turkic family, along with Azerbaijani, Kazakh, and Yakut. For more on the Turkic language family, check out our recent Words of the Day barchan and yurt. Dolma was first recorded in English in the late 1880s.
EXAMPLE OF DOLMA USED IN A SENTENCE
If stuffing a Thanksgiving turkey is too much work, dolma’s use of hollow vegetables and grape leaves makes it an enticing alternative.
swizzle
verb (used with object)
to agitate a beverage with a rod for stirring highballs and cocktails.
More about swizzle
Swizzle, “to agitate a beverage with a rod,” is of uncertain origin, but not because there are multiple competing theories. Instead, the mystery behind swizzle is the same as that behind many slang terms: linguists have no idea what the origin of swizzle could possibly be! Swizzle is first and foremost a noun referring to a type of alcoholic drink from the Caribbean, and in an example of metonymy, the name came to refer as well to the stick served with the drink. A similarly named drink is the switchel, which is found in some varieties of US and Canadian English, but just as with swizzle, switchel is also of uncertain origin. Swizzle was first recorded in English circa 1810.
EXAMPLE OF SWIZZLE USED IN A SENTENCE
As happy hour started, the bar filled with the sounds of patrons swizzling their drinks and clinking their glasses together in toasts.