cassolette

English

Etymology

(deprecated template usage) [etyl] French

Noun

cassolette (countable and uncountable, plural cassolettes)

1. (countable) A box or vase with a perforated cover to emit perfumes.
   • 1837 Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution: A History

     Far aloft, over the Altar of the Fatherland, on their tall crane standards of iron, swing pensile our antique Cassolettes or Pans of Incense; dispensing sweet incense-fumes[.]

2. The natural scent of a woman.
   • 2015, Peter Golden, Wherever There Is Light: A Novel, Simon and Schuster (→ISBN), page 234

     “Don't you like the word cassolette, Julian?” He supposed Thayer thought she was being clever. Cassolette was also a reference to the natural fragrance of a woman.

   • 2015, Christopher Buckley, But Enough About You: Essays, Simon and Schuster (→ISBN), page 234

     I know you're in a hurry to find out about cassolette, but please first note that “if you use your palm, rub it over your own and your partner's armpit area first.”

   • 2008, Tamsin Kelly, The Joy of Sex: Will this sex makeover hit the spot?, The Telegraph, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-health/3353522/The-Joy-of-Sex-Will-this-sex-makeover-hit-the-spot.html

     I'm still bemused by the original "cassolette", which turns out to be "the natural perfume of a clean woman: her greatest natural asset after her beauty", and definitely not to be confused with a small hotpot.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “cassolette”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)