When it comes to the vocabulary of sense, in bodice rippers and elsewhere in the English-speaking world, smell is at a significant disadvantage; nonspecificity is commonplace. A recent paper in the journal Cognition, for instance, quipped that if people were as bad at naming sights as they are at naming scents, “they would be diagnosed as aphasic and sent for medical help.”
— Alastair Gee, in The Uneducated Nose at The New Yorker.
Ha! Quite a good read, and I indirectly learned that E.L. James has a fascination with nonspecific-smelling bodywash.
It is a good read — I liked the bit about M Chabon too.