How good are your olfactory senses? They vary among folks; some can sense the tiniest variations in an odor while there are those who, like me, that do not. I can tell that there is a difference between a woman’s perfume and barnyard perfume. Most of the time I can also tell whether that difference is a good one or a bad one.

As a result, it is quite often that I will say something like, “that flower has a good smell”. Some one will point out that the fragrance of a flower is not a smell it is an aroma. The flower smell is usually lovely, like the scent of coffee is invigorating in the morning.. However, it may be correct since the dictionary tells us that the word smell, among other things, means to detect the scent with one’s olfactory nerves; actually, there are something like eleven synonyms for the word smell.

As an engineer or possibly a scientific sort of oddity I would turn to biology and it would tell me that smell was the sensation in the olfactory nerves that was activated by certain chemicals in gaseous form especially when their molecules impacted on my nostrils. That sort of response makes me something of a nerd. Accusation accepted. However, it is scientifically correct nerdness.

Needless to say, over the years wisdom has grown and now the reply is “ahh yes how silly not to recognize the difference.

It seems that semantically smell can be generally classified as having threes states. They are in ascending order 1. Negative 2. Neutral and 3. Nice

Let me point out that one can substitute a number of names for the scents which I label as negative, neutral or nice. For instance, flowers have nice scent; hay may have a neutral scent and a barnyard most likely has a negative scent. With practice you can differentiate and identify these smells by determining the state and commenting as if you were one with a sensitive nose.

The semantic rules are three as listed below:

1. That a negative state smells bad or may even stink

2. That a neutral state would be an acceptable odor

3. That “nice scent” is a lovely aroma

I must again point out that if you have an olfactory disability such as mine it is not all bad. For instance, it is rarely upsetting or offending when the bad scent or stink is present. This saves me much discomfort. Seeing those with sensitive olefacts wrinkle their noses at those smells feels good for a change.

However, on the other side of the coin, rarely does one get the benefit of a very lovely aroma, say from a rose. They all just smell good to me. That is most likely why the fellow said “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet” My version would be “A rose by any other name would have just as many thorns” Such is the fate of those of us who are lacking in olfactory skills.