Aromatics and the Soul: A Study of Smells/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV
SMELL AND SPEECH
That the effect of odour upon the mind is largely concealed is further illustrated by the curious fact that our native language does not possess a terminology descriptive of smells. We never name an odour ; we only say it has a “smell like” something or another. As a matter of fact, the same remark was made regarding French by P. P. Poncelet as long ago as 1755.
In this defect smell is unique among the senses. Even the sense that governs equilibration, of which the consciousness in normal conditions is never aware, has furnished us with “giddy” and “dizzy.”
Vision is represented by hundreds of words. We have, for instance, names not only for the primary colours red, yellow, and blue, but also for many of their combinations. (In these remarks we are not including the modern names given to the many shades of the synthetic colours.)
If we take red as an example, we find scarlet, crimson, vermilion, and pink. This colour, indeed, is ranked above all others in the vulgar tongue as having shades, doubtless because red, being the colour of blood and so of danger, always makes a strong appeal to the mind, an appeal which, among the responses, has led to special names being given to four of its tones.
The sense of hearing again, upon which speech is wholly dependent, has given rise to a multitude of words, many of them closely imitative of the sound, or onomatopoetic, with which words English, like the related German, is richly adorned.
Touch also has produced a number of descriptive epithets—“hot,” “cold,” “wet,” “dry,” “moist,” “clammy,” “rough,” “smooth,” as well as those like “heavy” and “light,” from the deep tactile sensibility.
Even taste has its vocabulary, a complete one, as it happens, since each of the four varieties of taste has its own appropriate name—“sweet,” “sour,” “bitter,” and “salt.”
But smell is speechless. We can truthfully say that in our native English language there is not a single word characterising any one of all the myriad odours in the world.
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.
Now we must here discriminate. Etymologists, delving down among the roots of our spoken language, come, so they say, to a point at which even the simplest epithet, even the plainest description of a sensation, is seen to derive from some object. Obviously this must be so in the beginning, whether or not etymologists are always correct in their particular ascriptions. An adjective describing, and later denoting, a quality, is generalised from some object bearing that quality. A “stony” countenance is a countenance rigid as stone. So in like manner, we are told, even the names of colours, deeply embedded in the language though they be, are ultimately referable to objects bearing that colour. “Brown,” to take the least dubitable instance, is the colour of burnt—“brunt”—things, while “blue,” according to authority, like the Scots “blae,” means “livid ” really, and is connected with “blow,” being the colour left after a blow. (But we say “a black eye” !)
Thus the descriptive epithets not only of smell, but also of sight, are ultimately derived from objects. But there is this great difference between them : the names of colours take us back to near the original trunk from which the Aryan languages branch off, whereas the names of odours, to this day still vague and indeterminate (at least in popular phraseology), are derived from the spoken tongue of to-day, or, in some cases, from foreign languages, and are, therefore, but recent additions.
This delay in the naming of classes of odours justifies the statement made at the outset of this section that smell is specchless. It shows, in other words, that although, as we have seen, its influence upon the mind may be profound, yet that influence does not extend as far as the speech-centres. It remains largely in the subconsciousness.
We should be guilty of error, however, were we to conclude that the scantiness of olfactory names is due to the lack of recognition by the consciousness of early man of smell in general, or to a failure to distinguish between different odours, because savages, in general less discriminating and analytical than cultured races, have, there is every reason to believe, a more acute and highly perfected olfactory sense. It has been reported that the North American Indian was able to track his enemy or his game by the scent alone, and Humboldt has recorded a similar acuteness on the part of the Indians of Peru. While admitting the marvellous skill of the American Indians in following up their quarry, most of us will, I imagine, be inclined to doubt whether its dependence upon smell is a true inference from the facts observed. Skill in woodcraft can be brought to such marvellous perfection that it may seem like magic to the onlooker—like magic, or like scent !
Further, although we are able to distinguish clearly enough between different odours, the identification and the naming of odours does not
come easy to us. Parfumeurs and druggists, no doubt, by the daily education of the sense, attain to a high degree of skill in this art, but those who have not cultivated their powers will find it very difficult, as the amusing parlour-game of guessing the names of concealed foodstuffs and spices shows. The difficulty is, like the paucity of olfactory terms, probably due to an absence of ready communication between the olfactory and speech centres in the brain.