Aromatic

My last post contained a definition that included the term aromatic, which I noted means having a pleasant and distinctive smell. "Doesn't it mean just having an odor," Mark asked?

As I thought about terminology around the sense of smell, I realized that the range of adjectives is somewhat limited, certainly more so than the wide range of terminology around the sense of hearing or the vast vocabulary related to sight.

There are a few terms that are neutral or could be used equally well to mean pleasant or unpleasant smells: odorous (although now more often used in a negative connotation, even though historically it was a neutral term), pungent, and heady.

As for general terms that mean "good smelling," there are just a handful: aromatic, fragrant, perfumed, scented, odoriferous*, and redolent. Of course, you could come up with additional terms that more narrowly refer to particular types of pleasant odors, such as sweet-smelling, spicy, citrusy, fruity, flowery, musky, honeyed, etc., but these aren't so readily interchangeable (or fungible) terms.

There seem to be more general terms related to "bad smelling:" stinky, smelly, reeking, rancid, malodorous, noxious, noisome, putrid, rank, fusty, funky, fetid, loathsome, skunky, and foul. Interesting that we generally use the term smelly to mean something that smells bad, but tasty to mean something that tastes good.

Smell is the sense we humans rely upon the least (a few professional perfume makers, cheese artisans, and wine critics aside), so perhaps it naturally follows that our olfactory vocabulary is relatively limited. At the same time, smell is tied to memory as much as -- or some think more than -- any other sense. The olfactory bulb is part of the brain's limbic system, an area closely associated with memory and feeling. Maybe it's that odors elicit such personal and individualistic responses, we haven't developed as much of a shared vocabulary around this sense. Just my own musings: no scientific hypotheses or studies to back that up.

Dictionary Definition
Pronounced: [a-rə-ma-tik] or [aer-ə-ma-tik]
Root: Middle English aromat meaning spice, from Anglo-French, from Latin aromat-, aroma, from Greek arōmat-, arōma
1. of, relating to, or having aroma; fragrant; having a strong or distinctive smell
2. in chemistry, of or pertaining to an aromatic compound or compounds.
(*In case you've come across odiferous, this is an erroneous shortened variant of odoriferous, according to the New Oxford American Dictionary.)