Page:Dan McKenzie - Aromatics and the Soul.pdf/74

62 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