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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,819
Pooh-Bah
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OP
Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,819 |
Ah now there's a word to describe something I've always loved and never had a word for! I wonder if there is a word for the smell in the air that precedes rain. Around here in the summer sometimes it smells just like the nearby Elkhorn Creek just before a rain.
Getting back to petrichor, the smell that comes with rain is probably very different in the city than it is in the countryside. And yet I like the urban smell of fresh rain on hot, dusty, oily streets. What do they call that -- petrolichor I imagine.
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 13,858 |
According to Quinion,It was named by two Australian researchers in an article in Nature in 1964,
And I have the impression that it occurs only under very special conditions that none of us are likely to encounter.
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Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 2,891
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 2,891 |
I think it is pretty common Bill. I've always noticed a distinct scent after a rainfall. Different depending upon where I am, the type of rainfall and the time of year.
I don't like the term though, generally it's a nice scent (apart from spring-time in the city which just smells like exposed and melting dog poop) and petrichor doesn't do it justice.
I think it's the "ich" which sounds like "ICK" a sound of disgust.
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