- 1
Halitosis is the doctor's word, and the advertisement's word, for breath that smells very bad. Everyday English is simply bad breath. ads love halitosis because it sounds like a medical problem you must “treat”. Though actually it is usually a sign that something is off — food, a dry mouth, teeth that need cleaning, sometimes a problem in the nose or stomach — not a bug with its own name that you catch like a cold. It is a stiff, hospital-sounding word. Saying “he has halitosis” can feel ruder than “his breath smells”, because you have stuck a label on the person.
口臭（廣告和診所的書面說法；日常就說口臭）
組成Coined in 1874 by the doctor Joseph William Howe, from Latin hālitus (“a breath, a whiff”) plus Greek νόσος (nósos, “disease”). It can also be read as Latin hālitus + English -osis, a doctor's ending for a condition.
同家族的字
- tuberculosisthe -osis at the end is the same doctor's ending for a named condition
- neurosisagain -osis: a condition, not a thing you can hold
原始詞典資料1 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
halitosisnoun/hæl.ɪˈtəʊ.sɪs/
- 1
medicinepathologysciencesThe condition of having stale or foul-smelling breath.
- Bad breath or halitosis is an indication of a disturbed digestive system. It is indicative of a bowel toxemia in either the small or large intestine with an overgrowth of bacteria or yeast.
- For example, the word halitosis was almost completely unknown among the general public until the early 20th century when a business owner named Gerard Lambert started using it to sell a new product called Listerine. By giving a mundane fact of life (bad breath) a scientific sounding label, Lambert elevated the authority and desirability of his product many times over.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。