odiferous

[Jonathan Lighter]

We're sure. "Smells" were mentioned.

  JL

Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Laurence Horn
Subject: Re: odiferous
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At 6:29 AM -0700 6/24/06, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>Alisyn Camerota of _Fox & Friends_ just used the word "odiferous."
>Her two co-hosts then began to laugh and tease her for having "been
>reading her vocabulary book." TV news people usually make fun of
>words that might be unfamiliar to a tenth-grader.
>
> But they didn't make fun of "odiferous" for being a stupidism for
>"odoriferous." Google offers 100,000 hits. Microsoft Word's
>spellchecker is said to accept, nay, to recommend it.
>
> JL
>
Are we sure the intended lexical item wasn't in fact "odiferous",
which I assume would mean 'hate-bearing', an eminently plausible
meaning for a lexical item on Fox News to bear?

LH

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