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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

petrichor.

The distinctive scent, caused by geosmin, which accompanies the first rain after a long, warm, dry spell.

9 characters3 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈpɛt.ɹɪ.kəReceived-Pronunciation-ˌkɔː/Received-Pronunciation/ˈpɛt.ɹɪˌkɔɹCanada, US-kɚ/Canada, US
  1. The distinctive scent, caused by geosmin, which accompanies the first rain after a long, warm, dry spell.

    uncountable
  2. The yellow organic oil that yields this scent.

    uncountable
Where this word comes from

From petr(o)- + ichor. Coined by Australian scientist Richard Grenfell Thomas in 1964 for the article “Nature of Argillaceous Odour”, co-authored by Isabel Joy Bear and published in the journal Nature.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.