It’s always nice and exciting to discover a new word that resonates with you. And an added bonus is that it has a melodious quality.
The word is “petrichor” which means: the smell of earth after rain.
March 31, 2019 by Sharifah
It’s always nice and exciting to discover a new word that resonates with you. And an added bonus is that it has a melodious quality.
The word is “petrichor” which means: the smell of earth after rain.
Posted in Inspiration, Nature/Animals | Tagged earth, fragrance, language, nature, rain, scent, senses, word | 6 Comments
Breathing deeply!!
Right on!
Ah, yes, I am imagining petrichor. Magic!
🙂 !
Actually there was no word to describe it until 1964.
.
Once I had a dream quite some years back, and in wanting to describe it found the word online about some twenty years ago.
The term was coined in 1964 by two Australian CSIRO researchers, Isabel Joy Bear and Richard G. Thomas, for an article in the journal Nature.In the article, the authors describe how the smell derives from an oil exuded by certain plants during dry periods, whereupon it is absorbed by clay-based soils and rocks. During rain, the oil is released into the air along with another compound, geosmin, a metabolic by-product of certain actinobacteria, which is emitted by wet soil, producing the distinctive scent; ozone may also be present if there is lightning. In a follow-up paper, Bear and Thomas (1965) showed that the oil retards seed germination and early plant growth.
Thank you for sharing. Very interesting, both the explanation and your dream.