nidor

From Latin nidor.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈnʌɪdə/, /ˈnʌɪdɔː/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈnaɪdəɹ/

nidor (countable and uncountable, plural nidors)

1. The smell of burning animals, especially of burning animal fat.
   • 1681, Henry Hallywell, Melampronoea:

     the material Demons do strangely gluttonize upon the Nidours and Bloud of Sacrifices

   • 1743, Thomas Stackhouse, A Compleat Body of Speculative and Practical Divinity, edition 3 (London), page 524:

     The First-fruits were a common Oblation to their Deities; but the chief Part of their Worship consisted in sacrificiing Animals : And this they did out of a real Persuasion, that their Gods were pleased with their Blood, and were nourished with the Smoke, and Nidor of them; and therefore the more costly, they thought them the more acceptable, for which Reason, they stuck not sometimes to regale them with human Sacrifices.

   • 1896, Daniel Waterland, A Review of the Doctrine of the Eucharist, page 623:

     Elsewhere to blood, smoke, and nidor, he opposes purity of thought, sincerity of affection, […]

   • 1997, Thomas Pynchon, Mason & Dixon:

     The smell, at some times of year sensible for Miles, of Sheep, and wool-fat, and that queasy Nidor of Lambs baking in ovens meant for bread […]

2. (nonstandard) Any smell.
   • 2007, Samuel F. Pickering, Autumn spring, page 28:

     For her part Vicki smells little, not even the nidor of antifreeze at the stock car races at Lake Doucette.

   • 2008, Edgar Wallace, Devil Man, page 9:

     The long, yellow face was framed in side whiskers; there hung about him the nidor of stale cigar smoke.

• dinor

Uncertain. Perhaps from Proto-Italic *knīdos or *kneydos, itself perhaps from Proto-Indo-European *knīdos or *knéyd-os. Sihler alternatively reconstructs a possible pre-form Proto-Italic *knīdōs. The term may ultimately derive from the root *kneyd- (“to scratch”). It is possible that a semantic connection between a word for "to sting" and "to stink" is paralleled in English stink and Gothic stigqan (“to clash”). The term may also be cognate with Homeric Ancient Greek κνίση (knísē, “smell of roasting fat”) and Attic κνῖσα (knîsa), but Beekes finds this phonetically unlikely. However, the linguist Stefan Höfler posits a pre-form *kníHd-ōs, itself from a root *kníHd-, which—according to Höfler—could unify the Greek and Latin forms.

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [ˈniː.dɔr]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [ˈniː.dor]

nīdor m (genitive nīdōris); third declension

1. the steam or smell from roasting, burning or boiling (especially animals)

Third-declension noun.

• English: nidor
• Italian: nidore
• Portuguese: nidor

• “nidor”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “nidor”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891), An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• “nidor”, in Gaffiot, Félix (1934), Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• De Vaan, Michiel (2008), “nīdor”, in Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 7), Leiden, Boston: Brill, →ISBN, page 408
• Sihler, Andrew L. (1995), New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 204
• Stefan Höfler (22 August 2025), Jesús de la Villa, Araceli Striano, and Rodrigo Verano, editors, Advances in Ancient Greek Linguistics‎^[1], De Gruyter, →DOI, →ISBN