redolent

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English

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WOTD – 20 January 2008

Etymology

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From Middle English redolent (first attested in 1400), from Old French redolent, from Latin redolentem, present participle of redoleō (“I emit a scent”), from red- + oleō (“I smell”).

Pronunciation

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Adjective

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redolent (comparative more redolent, superlative most redolent)

  1. Fragrant or aromatic; having a sweet scent.
    Synonyms: aromatic, fragrant
  2. Having the smell of the article in question.
    Synonyms: reeking, smelling
    • 1838 (date written), L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], “(please specify the page)”, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn, […], published 1842, →OCLC, pages 163–164:
      Most of the articles were home-made; the bread, the yellow butter, as golden as the cups to which it has given name; the thickest cream, and a honeycomb redolent of the thyme which even then echoed with the hum of the bees.
    • 1861, Francis Colburn Adams, chapter 32, in An Outcast:
      His breath is already redolent of whiskey.
    • 1922 February, James Joyce, “[Episode 16]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company, […], →OCLC, part III [Nostos], page 572:
      Stephen, that is when the accosting figure came to close quarters, though he was not in an over sober state himself recognised Corley's breath redolent of rotten cornjuice.
  3. (figurative) Suggestive or reminiscent.
    • 1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XXV, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume III, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 213:
      But, in the country, the green fields are so joyous, the pure air so fresh, the blue sky so clear; the fine old trees, redolent of earth's loveliest mythology, when the dryades peopled their green shadows;...
    • 1919, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, A vision:
      But forth from sweat-shops, tenement and prison
      Wailed minor protests, redolent with pain.
    • 1928 February, H[oward] P[hillips] Lovecraft, “The Call of Cthulhu”, in Farnsworth Wright, editor, Weird Tales: A Magazine of the Bizarre and Unusual, volume 11, number 2, Indianapolis, Ind.: Popular Fiction Pub. Co., →OCLC, pages 159–178 and 287:
      He said that the geometry of the dream-place he saw was abnormal, non-Euclidean, and loathsomely redolent of spheres and dimensions apart from ours.
    • 2021 February 22, Polly Toynbee, “The Covid contracts furore is no surprise – Britain has long been a chumocracy”, in The Guardian‎[1]:
      The sums are so vast, the secrecy so shocking, that “chumocracy” doesn’t begin to capture what Britain has become – redolent as we are of banana republics, the Russian oligarchy and failed states.

Derived terms

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Translations

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Anagrams

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Latin

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Verb

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redolent

  1. third-person plural present active indicative of redoleō (“they smell (intransitive, i.e. 'they emit / diffuse an odour')”)
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