Other forms: perfumes
Perfume is a sweet-smelling liquid dabbed or sprayed on the skin. A bottle of perfume, wear perfume, the perfume counter.
The strengths have names: parfum is the strongest and most expensive, then eau de parfum, eau de toilette and eau de cologne. Aftershave is the traditional term for men's, though the industry now says fragrance for everything. Perfume also means any pleasant smell, particularly of flowers: the perfume of the roses. The stress moves: the noun is PER-fume and the verb per-FUME.
1nounperfumeA sweet-smelling liquid worn on the skin.
“She has worn the same perfume since about 1990.”
synonyms: fragrance, scent
2nounpleasantA pleasant smell.
“The perfume of the lilacs filled the whole garden.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
perfume is a pleasant smell.
Also accepted in games: fragrance, scent
French parfum comes from Latin per fumum, through smoke — scent was originally made by burning aromatic resins. Perfume and fume are the same word, which is why incense is the true ancestor of everything on a perfume counter.
Middle French
parfum
English, today
perfume
Borrowed from Middle French parfum, perfum. a doublet of parfum.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA