Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Plural form of effluvium.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • But still applies to the flu, because that way we can see all the various effluviums accumulating on peoples 'clothing and know whom to avoid.

    Will Durst: How Not to Get the Swine Flu 2009

  • Boyle recognised that the air is not a simple or elementary substance; he spoke of it as "a confused aggregate of effluviums from such differing bodies, that, though they all agree in constituting by their minuteness and various motions one great mass of fluid matter, yet perhaps there is scarce a more heterogeneous body in the world."

    The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry M. M. Pattison Muir

  • It is from this custom of the priests that some authors maintain these AEolists to have been very ancient in the world, because the delivery of their mysteries, which I have just now mentioned, appears exactly the same with that of other ancient oracles, whose inspirations were owing to certain subterraneous effluviums of wind delivered with the same pain to the priest, and much about the same influence on the people.

    A Tale of a Tub Jonathan Swift 1706

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