Halitosis
I’m talking about the word this time – where did we get the fancy word Halitosis? According to some internet stories, the term "halitosis" was created by the Listerine company in 1921. According to Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language (1996), halitosis, "a condition of having offensive-smelling breath" and was first recorded between 1865-1870. This is supposed to be the dating of the word’s earliest known meaning. And it comes from ‘halitus’, meaning ‘breath’ or ‘exhalation’. These are both derived from the Latin halitare – to breathe.
The older dictionaries I have (1843, 1825, and a copy of Webster’s 1806 Compendious Dictionary of the English Language) predate the 1865 date in the Encyclopedic Dictionary. They all only mention halituous’ – vaporous or fumous or like breath.
There you have it. Halitosis only pops up in the past 150 years, whether you believe the Listerine version or not. Not to worry, I’m sure people before then had plenty of terms to describe stinky nasty breath.
