Describe a banana. It's yellow, perhaps with some green edges. When peeled, it has a smooth, soft, mushy texture. It tastes sweet, maybe a little creamy.
And it smells like... well, it smells like a banana.
Every sense has its own “lexical field,” a vast palette of dedicated descriptive words for colors, sounds, tastes, and textures. But smell? In English, there are only three dedicated smell words—stinky, fragrant, and musty—and the first two are more about the smeller's subjective experience than about the smelly thing itself.
— Read more at Why Do Most Languages Have So Few Words for Smells? at The Atlantic.
Love this article! I love words and often think about our cunning use of language to describe smell. There is a vast chasm of meaning between “it smells stinky or fragrant or musty” and “it smells like fill-in-the-blank”.
Plus, who knew a binturong smells like popcorn?
I liked it too! She must be wrong that there are only 3 words, though. What about stench, or fetid? Although true that they don’t describe specific smells.
Yes, that made no sense to me at all. It’s like the urban myth that the Inuit have 200/300/400 words for snow, it’s silly. “Stinky” or “fragrant” don’t describe a specific smell any more than “fetid”.
Good point about the Inuit snow words — especially since apparently the experts are still arguing over the matter.
This article interests me on so many levels! Two thoughts:
1. We should learn one of these languages, or at least the smell related nouns.
2. Maybe perfume people are so awesome and kind because we are a bunch who can communicate without universal terms?
Love your second point!