No doubt there are many words that we do apply to smells. But they are either borrowed from the vocabulary of one of the other senses, in order to describe a state of mind induced by the smell, or else they originate from some known odoriferous object.
Thus in the opening paragraph of this book we encountered a large number of olfactory words. But they are all vague; some applying to pleasant, some to unpleasant, odours. Many of them are very expressive, for disgust begets strong language. But although our olfactory vocabulary may be forceful, it is not discriminative. In other words, it is an emotional, not an intellectual, vocabulary.
These considerations will become more obvious as we deal with olfactory epithets in detail.
Thus smells may be “faint” or “strong,” but so may any other sensation. And to call a smell “sweet” leaves it but vague, while at the same time the epithet is borrowed from the vocabulary of taste, where its meaning is quite precise. “Pungent” is also a transposition, this time from touch, as it is a Latin word signifying “prickly.”
In addition to such terms as these we have a small number of words which we are in the habit of applying to certain classes of odours. “Musty” is one of these. This adjective certainly has the look of a pure English word about it, but, as it indicates a smell like that of mould, it is probably derived from the Latin mucidus, mouldy; we cannot, therefore, claim it to be English any more than we can claim it to be definite. Perhaps the puff-balls of our autumn woods supply the best example of a musty smell.
“Mawkish,” however, is certainly English, as it is derived from an old word, still used, by the way, in Scotland—“mauk,” a maggot. “Dank,” again, means moist, and is the smell of damp, cold places. “Stuffy” also, which is a modern application to a smell, is the odour of a close, badly ventilated room, where we feel oppressed, as if half stifled.
But these words—and there are not many more of them—are only applied vaguely and to general classes of odours. We never say of any one in particular that, e.g., “This is the smell called ‘dank,’” in the precise way we can say: “That colour is green,” or “That sound is a whistle.”
We may even go further. We know that the flavour of things tasted is an olfactory sensation. Now while language attains to precision in characterising the sensations of pure taste, as we have just seen, it is significant that flavours are left unnamed, except in the manner we have just explained for olfactory epithets.
The scanty number of odorous terms in English has of late been copiously added to by words borrowed from other languages, chiefly, it is said, from the Persian.
“Musk,” for instance, is Persian. “Aroma” is pure Greek, and if Liddell and Scott’s suggested derivation of ἄρωμα (a spice) from the Sanscrit ghrâ (a smell) is correct, then the original meaning of “aromatic” is merely “smelly.” “Mephitic,” not a popular word even now, comes from the Latin mephitis, “a foul, pestilential exhalation from the ground, often sulphury in character, as from volcanic regions.” The brimstone odour of the devil—of which more anon—is mephitic.