All in the Connotation...

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TrampledPixie

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While working on one of my fiction projects last night, I began to muse about what different words imply even if they're inherently talking about the same thing. The three in question are:

Smell
Scent
Odor

I realize that others also fit in with those (such as 'fragrance'), but each of those three can definitely have positive or negative associations. What are the first things that come to mind when you read them?

I'm writing from the perspective of a coroner right now, so nothing is particularly pleasant.
 

Wayne K

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The word Stink jumped to mind, I just got back from working in the sun all day.
 

megan_d

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Smell might be neutral, but it's only one little letter away from smelly, which is not so neutral.
 

Shakesbear

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The first thing that comes to mind is that some smells hit the nostrils right away and might linger – the smell could be described as a reek or stench. A scent is subtle, possible not noticeable until one has taken a few breaths – a perfume or fragrance that is understated, possible even delicate. An odour is a sort of cross between scent and smell – it could be an overstated perfume that is pleasant or a nasty stink coming from something you would rather remain in ignorance of. A smell could be described as ‘nasty’ a scent could be ‘nice’. Odour could be ‘unacceptable’. There are smells and scents that stay in your nostrils for hours after you have been near their source. Some are very evocative of time and place and you only have to smell them to be back in that time and place.
 

jodiodi

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I've used "scent of decay" or "scent of death" and neither of those have good connotations. They just imply an olfactory identification.
 

AnonymousWriter

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Smell= pretty neutral
Scent= Good, like flowers or perfume
Odor= Eww, body odor...definitely bad.
 

TrampledPixie

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Those are a lot of the same thoughts that I've been having, and it never ceases to amaze me the sort of picture that one word (like "odor" in this case) can put in your brain. Don't they say that the sense of smell is the one most strongly tied to memory?

Thank you so much for all your input!
 

MMcQuown

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Tomato, tomahto

In one of his more notable exchanges, a woman said to Dr. Johnson, "Oh! You smell!" To which he replied, "No, Madam; you smell. I stink." I have always read that to imply that, at least in Johnson's time, to smell meant to detect an odor, while to stink was to give one off. In the book I am currently trying to shop, I used the term 'scent' to denote a pleasant odor.
"Reek,' on the other hand, used to mean 'to give off vapours' as in the old Scottish blessing, "Lang may your lum (chimney) reek," i.e., smoke, meaning that you will live a long time. I seem to remember a reference in the Iliad or the Odyssey about the 'reek of blood,' which I read as steaming, rather than stinking.
 

blacbird

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Robert Burns, the patron saint of Scottish poesy, referred as I recall to the "reekin'" haggis, by which he in no measure meant a bad aroma. But the connotations of words change over time (think of the current slang meanings of "bad" and "sick"). A hundred years or more ago, "singular" carried a connotation of strange or eerie. Now, it pretty much just means "one" of something. So Johnson's meaning may have now slipped into obscurity, by present standards.

caw
 
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