Pronounced: an-ag-NAWR-uh-sis (alt: an-ag-NOR-uh-sis), noun
Notes: Another good word to know
Yesterday’s word
The word effluvium is “an unpleasant discharge, for example, fumes, vapors, or gases from waste or decaying matter”
First usage
Our word came into English in the mid-1600s
Background / Comments
I have a kind of memory that I’ve run across this word talking about sewage in Victorian times; I also seem to remember that they called it (euphemistically) “flow”. That’s rather appropriate, given the origin: it came from the Latin word effluere (to flow out), which was a combination of ex- (out) and fluere (to flow). We get the word fluid from the same kind of root words. In addition, the words affluent, influence, and influenza also come from the same root word.
Richard's Vocabulary Word-of-the-Day 