this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2025
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Halitosis was already the medical term for bad breath, with evidence of its use in England. All that word did was give an American businessman/marketer a polite euphemism to talk about something that was considered taboo at the time (body odors were associated with poor hygiene and lower status people). It does seem like they pushed hard with marketing to make it into a more widespread "problem" though.
https://web.archive.org/web/20160712170405/http://www.chemheritage.org/discover/online-resources/thanks-to-chemistry/listerine.aspx