the.com/halitosis
The medical word for bad breath, invented so doctors could bill you in Latin.
means Bad breath — chronically unpleasant-smelling breath, usually from bacteria in the mouth, gum disease, or something you ate.
from Built from Latin halitus, 'breath' or 'exhalation' (from halare, 'to breathe'), plus the medical suffix -osis, meaning 'a condition of.' The word itself is a 20th-century marketing creation — coined (or at least popularized) in the 1920s by Listerine's advertising copywriters, who took a vague, embarrassing everyday problem and dressed it up in clinical Latin to make it sound like a diagnosable disease you urgently needed their mouthwash to cure.
- origin
- from halitus, Latin for breath
- usual cause
- bacteria eating leftover food on your tongue
- coined by
- a 1920s Listerine ad campaign, not a doctor
- mints don't fix it
- they just mask it for minutes