I opened my window to see that it had rained.
or
I opened my window, the fresh scent of rain filling my nose.
Smells are very influential. They can make our mouths water or make us feel ill. We can use scents to invoke emotion. If you hand me a freshly bathed baby, I am going to put their cute little noggin' next to my nose and I'm going to take a big whiff because baby shampoo makes me feel happy.
Some scents can even trigger memories. This past week my family visited the Great Salt Lake in Utah. If any of you have ever been there you know that it has a distinctive odor. In the future, whenever I recall our trip there I will forever remember how it smelled of a thousand decaying cow corpses. For those of you who have not visited, be grateful that you do not have that smell imprinted on your memory.
If you want to get really deep, scents can even be used symbolically to represent emotions. What does fear smell like? Or love? For me love smells like my husband's armpit. I know, it sounds ridiculous and pretty gross, but I like the way his natural scent mingles with his masculine deodorant. (Sorry if that is a bit TMI.)
The more descriptive we are when writing about smells, the better chance the imagination can recreate the scent. So what is a scent and how can we describe it? Dictionary.com defines scent as a distinctive odor; an odor left in passing (like when dogs follow a scent); or perfume.
Synonyms for the word scent include:
smell, fragrance, aroma, balm, bouquet, aura, essence, incense, perfume, pheromone, redolence, and whiff.
Some descriptive words for scents refer to what made the smell or what it smells like. For example:
doggy, lemony, lilac, lime, mildewed, minty, moldy, musky, pine, plastic, rose, smoky, skunky, and woodsy.
Most descriptive words for scents tell the way it smells or what the smell represents. These are words like:
acid, acrid, airy, biting, clean, crisp, dirty, earthy, faint, feminine, fetid, fishy, fresh, floral, flowery, light, loamy, masculine, moist, musty, nauseating, perfumed, pungent, putrid, rancid, redolent, repulsive, rotten, sharp, sour, spicy, spoiled, stale, stinking, sweaty, sweet, tart, and wispy.
This is only a small list of words we can use to describe scents. If you have more suggestions, please leave a comment below. I would love to know how you use smells in your writing.
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