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Saturday, November 14, 2015

Why only few words for smell in most languages?




Why only few words for smell in most languages?

The reasons could be many, for that matter even for taste basically is classified only into 6 categories.

When it is a topic with a mixture of linguistics and biology two scholars automatically come across my mind one Steven Pinker and Guy Murchie.

The problem gets further complicated because over ‘5 million nasal sensory cells are capable of detecting a few thousand smells distinctly’ as we infer from The blind Traveller of James Holman and as Tristan Gooley writes in The Natural Explorer; Understanding Your Landscape, “ smell becomes a complex tapestry , squares of familiarity mixed with surprise, nostalgia and intrigue”. Very well said and smell carries with it more of mental associations with a predominance over other sensations. That’s why in the competition of the two organs nose and mouth, very often even food is recognized more with the smell than the taste, or at least the aroma precedes that of taste.

Smell seems to precede announcing either the expectation or arrival of something. Sometimes even when we read the word coffee we start smelling coffee, that’s why perhaps the expression ‘smell trouble’


Guy Murchie to my knowledge was the first question the very classification of senses into a very limited number and went on to write about Eleven [11] Senses of Radiation and Feeling,
Twenty-one [21] Senses of Chemistry, Mind and Spirit etc.

So I feel it is only appropriate that I glean into his works as to why the number of words for smell has been limited.  The italics and underlining gives out at least a partial explanation as to why we cannot and do not have many words for smell.


Guy Murchie in his excellent book The Seven Mysteries Of life  writes,

 “The primary smells, it turned out, are seven in number: camphoric, musky, floral, minty, ethereal, pungent and putrid, each of them produced by various molecules approximating a distinctive shape or having a definite electric charge, and each smellable only when it is received in the right one of seven different kinds of complementary cavities distributed among seven corresponding areas in the molecular walls of the olfactory nerve cells. If these are olfactory lies, it is because smell too is a kind of language.”



Guy Murchie writes further about smell:

“Linus Pauling announced the discovery in 1946 that "a molecule the same shape as a camphor molecule will smell like camphor even though it may be quite unrelated to camphor chemically."

And three years later R. W. Moncrieff reformulated the whole lock-and key concept in modern terms, followed by John Amoore, who called it the steric theory and, with the help of colleagues, pretty well established it by demonstrating that odors, like colors, can be sorted into a few primary ones of which all others are mixtures.”


“Even though odors can be wafted great distances on the wind and the keenest scented animals have proven they can detect a test aroma diluted to 10 ̄13 or only one molecule in ten trillion of average air, it still is hard to believe the confirmed reports that bloodhounds and other trained dogs have found a lost wallet, a gun or a vial of heroin under tons of manure, or concealed in a chemical factory reeking with fumes of sulfur or ammonia.”

“The explanation seems to be that no smell can completely cancel or camouflage another smell because the molecules both smells consist of are irretrievably diffused throughout the air they are in, and any two or more simultaneous odors, no matter how mixed, are smelled alternately in the olfactory cells and nerves, even though the alternations may be only milliseconds apart.”

“Furthermore a dog who has sniffed, say, a man's cap can later recognize any other part of him and easily follow his trail because there are recognizable olfactory relationships between body parts as well as between species, races, sexes, ages, diets, diseases, neighborhoods, occupations or almost any other classifications of life”.

“If you want to avoid being tracked by a dog, then the first thing to do is wear brand-new shoes or cover your old ones with untouched plastic bags, so that the fewest possible molecules from your feet are left on the ground. But, in an actual case, even if no telltale molecules from your body get left behind (something manifestly impossible) an experienced dog may be able to follow you by smelling
the freshly crushed grass or disturbed soil where you stepped, for this is the dog's specialty: he carries his nose close to the ground and the smelling part of his brain is not only disproportionately large but specialized to detect tiny traces of substances such as aliphatic acids in sweat that seep through shoes and diffuse steadily outward in air. In fact smell to him is a little like sound to a bat, giving him a degree of what we seeing-creatures call visualization.”


“The rattler, for one, has at least four "words" in his smell vocabulary. Besides his ambush scent of cucumber, he switches to a terrifying effluvium when in combat, exudes a socially somnific savor at hibernation time and wafts a love perfume when looking for a mate.”

Besides all these the best way to convey smell is to something that smells like that


Here I am reproducing words connected with smell, especially adjective from my

Reverse Dictionary of Adjectives

ABBREVIATIONS USED:

1) UTI – Used to indicate:

This I have arrived at after working for days together to find out a single suitable simple expression to explain or define adjectives and doing away with several introductory words/phrases used by dictionaries in defining adjectives, a comprehensive list of 37 such words and phrases like ‘able to ,apt to, capable of, pertaining to,’ etc are well compiled and mentioned by SIDNEY I LANDOU in the book ‘Dictionaries: The art and craft of lexicography.’

2) 
N-for indicating all negations be it a noun bearing prefixes –non, -in, etc or suffix –less, or for referring to contrary of an action or condition.

3) 
V-for indicating all intensities to avoid use of all the following terms such as :very, too, excessive, enormous etc either before and/ or after the noun or verb.

4) 
F-for indicating any fear or phobia.

5) 
S-for indicating any science, study, technique, art etc.

6) 
L-for indicating all likeness and avoid use of words like similar, shaped, like , form etc.

The four columns below indicate





                  Reverse Dictionary of Adjectives

Keyword                                     Connective   ADJECTIVE                                  Meaning
                                                        word

SMELL
SMELLABLE
PERCEIVING ODOUR THROUGH THE NOSE
SMELL
BAD
FETID
UTI ABAD SMELL
SMELL
GOOD
FRAGRANT
UTI PLEASANT SMELL
SMELL ESP BAD SMELL EMANATING FROM OUTH
HALITOTIC
BAD SMELL FROM MOUTH
SMELL BAD
REEKY
UTI BAD SMELL
SMELL BAD
RANCID
UTI BAD SMELL/TASTE
SMELL ESP BAD ONE
SMELLY
STH EMITTING BAD SMELL
SMELL ESP BOD BODY SMELL(F)
BROMIDROSIPHOBIC
FEAR OF BAD BODY SMELL
SMELL ESP GOOD SMELL PRODUCING
ODORIFEROUS/ODOROUS
STH THAT PRODUCES GOOD SMELL
SMELL ESP NOXIOUS/POISONOUS
MEPHITIC
STH NOXIOUS/POISONOUS TO SMELL
SMELL ESP SENSE OF SMELL
OLFACTORY
SENSE OF SMELL
SMELL ESP SENSE OF SMELL(S)
OLFACTOLOGICAL
SCIENCE OF SENSE OF SMELL
SMELL ESP SENSE OF SMELL(V)
HYPEROSMIC
ABNORMAL SHARPNESS OF SENSE OF SMELL
SMELL ESP SWEET SMELLING
AROMATIC
STH SWEET SMELLING
SMELL GOOD
REDOLENT
UTI PLEASANT SMELL
SMELL OF GARLIC/ONION
ALLIACEOUS
SMELL OF GARLIC/ONION
SMELL OF MUSK
MOSCHATE/MOSCHINE
STH HAVING MUSK LIKE ODOUR
SMELL OF OLD FOOD/CLOSED ROOM ETC
MUSTY
ODOUR OF LONG CLOSED ROOM/OLD FOOD
SMELL OFAN ANIMAL
CAPRYLIC
ODOUR OF AN ANIMAL
SMELL SENSATION(N)
ANOSMIC
ABSENCE OF SENSE OF SMELL
SMELL THAT IS
PLEASANT
PERFUMY
STH THAT HAS PLEASANT SMELL
SMELL THAT IS
PLEASANT
PERFUMY
STH THAT HAS PLEASANT SMELL
SMELL THAT IS BAD/FOUL
STINKING/STINKY
STHFOUL-SMELLING
SMELL(N)
ANOSMATIC
LOSS OF SENSE OF SMELL
SMELL(N)
INODOROUS
SMELL(N)
SMELL(N)
ODORLESS
ABSENCE OF GOOD SMELL
SMELL(N)ESP PLEASANT ONE
SCENTLESS
STH WITHOUT A PLEASANT SMELL
SMELL(V)
OXYRHINE/RHYNOUS
SHARP NOSE/SHARP SCENTEDNESS
SMELL,ESP SENSE OF SMELL
OSPHRETIC
SENSE OF SMELL
SMELL,STH THAT CAUSES
TUMEFACIENT
CAUSING SMELL
SMELL/ODOR PERCEPTION
OSMATIC
PERCEIVING SMELLS/ODORS
SMELLING
REDOLENT
SMELLING/SMACKING OF
SMELLING ESP GOOD
DEODRANT
STH GOOD SMELLING
SMELLING SENSATION DISORDERS(S)
OSMONOSOLOGICAL
STUDY OF DISORDEWRS OF SENSE OF SMELL
SMELLING SENSE THAT IS SHARP/ACUTE
OXYOSPHRESIC
SHARP SENSE OF SMELL
SMELLS ESP STRANGE ONES AND
DESIRE FOR THEM
PAROSMIC
DESIRE FOR STRANGE SMELLS
SMELLS(F)
OSMOPHOBIC
FEAR OF SMELLS
SMELLS(S)
OSMOLOGIC
STUDY OF SMELLS
SMELLS,ESP GREAT LOVE OF/FONDNESS FOR THEM
OSPHRESIOPHIBIC
GREAT FONDNESS/LOVE FOR SMELLS/ORORS
SMELLS/ODORS HATRED
OSPHRESIOPHOBIC
HATRED OF SMELLS/ODORS






All these can be found in this link

Or this


On a lighter vein if one were to coin a word for every smell perceptible to humans, and worse still all the distinct smells that are said to be perceptible to dogs, then, the dictionary of smell may even exceed in number of volumes than Oxford English Dictionary.

While writing about smell I cannot resist remembering Lawrence Durrell who connects and remembers most things with the smell.






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