Petrichor
What an interesting word. Petrichor. I saw it the other day and promptly wrote it down in my notebook to look up later. I wish I could remember where I read it, but I can’t. It was either a novel or The New Yorker. That narrows it down a bit, doesn’t it?
pet·ri·chor
/ˈpeˌtrīkôr/
noun
a pleasant smell that frequently accompanies the first rain after a long period of warm, dry weather.
"other than the petrichor emanating from the rapidly drying grass, there was not a trace of evidence that it had rained at all"
It’s a great word. I love the way it sounds, and now when I say it, I almost think I can smell it as well. Something to keep in my back pocket when I am writing.
The term hasn’t been around that long—less than a century, but longer than I’ve been around. It was coined in the 60’s by two Australian researchers. To read more about the scientific aspect of the word, you can read this article from the BBC News.