Isn’t it a little odd that smells are so rarely acknowledged linguistically? I feel like the whole sense is relegated to simile; sentences describing smells are often “it smelt like”, “the oder of”, “he caught a whiff of”, and then the object that is being smelt. One might see an adjective then smell noun dynamic as well, such as a “rosey scent” or a “horrible smell”. The way to write smells are either “the smell of object” or “objecty smell” (e.g. “the smell of fish or fishy smell”). So rarely in english does the smell exist as a smell itself, only attached to the source of the smell. I find this a little limiting, I think language should be able to capture smells a little better.
Smell is so often the least respected scent. That ice-breaker activity “Which sense would you lose if you could lose one” is answered likely 95% of the time with smell (I once had a friend who said taste because then he would eat extremely healthy, so he is the 5%). However, smell rules our memory, attraction, disgust. It’s our most primal and mysterious sense. I posit that perhaps it seems that way because we don’t have language for it?
And why isn’t there a whole series of smell-type words? I love it when a topic has a series of words that all flow together, almost like they are all the tracks on the same album. Mushrooms satisfy this feeling - words like Chitin, Mycorrizae, Fungal, Hyphae, and Mycelium are all uniquely mushroomic. I think smells should have something like this. Granted - there are loads of smell words: Aroma, Miasma, Order, Stench, Olfactory, etc. But so rarely do they describe specific smells, but rather the emotional value that the smell brings (e.g. Aroma = good, Fetor=bad).
One exception to this is one of my all-time favorite words: Petrichor, noun: “a pleasant smell that frequently accompanies the first rain after a long period of warm, dry weather.” . I really enjoy that particular verbiage - it is something specific, a readily identifiable memory, and the smell is detached from that of rain or grass. It is naming the smell in and of itself. I wonder if it would make sense to use Ethis model for other smells. For example, the smell of baked goods is something like Comphior (like comfy petrichor?) - “the comphior filled the room as my mother baked”. Or the smell of post restaurant bleach smell “Blanquechet” (idk) - “We left the blaquechet of the kitchen as we locked up for the night). As I write this spring is in full bloom - so maybe that flowery earthy smell could be something like Springscenti. None of these examples are great - but I hope that you get what I’m getting at.
The smell produced by fire (like a campfire or fireplace) is so nostalgic, beautiful, and deeply linked to our ancestral brains as a source of comfort and community - but “smell of fire” just does not satisfy that need for a deeper more fleshed-out word. There’s that whole “there are 55 Eskimo words for snow” adage, and I wonder if this is the case for smell verbiage, are there languages out there that have a more expansive vocabulary for smells and are smell words a limitation of English?
Ultimately, I think giving specific smells their own names, unique names distinct form their sources, can add a necessary and meaningful connection to the smells, giving them lives of their own rather than the chemical outcome of some odorous source. Smells are elusive linguistically, and I think that limits our ability to understand, communicate, and celebrate them to the degree that we could.