the.com/scent
the one sense wired straight to memory before your brain can even ask permission
means a distinctive smell, especially a pleasant or trackable one, or the trail of odor an animal leaves behind
from From Old French 'sentir,' to feel, smell, or perceive, which traces back to Latin 'sentire,' to perceive or sense — the same root behind 'sentiment' and 'sentinel.' Tellingly, the word arrived in English without its 'c': it was spelled 'sent' for centuries. The silent 'c' was bolted on around the 17th century, possibly by analogy with words like 'science' or 'scene,' giving the word a spelling that perceives differently than it sounds.
- direct line
- smell skips the brain's relay and hits emotion first
- vast range
- humans detect roughly a trillion distinct odors
- proust effect
- a single whiff resurrects decades-old memories instantly
- fingerprint
- everyone's natural body odor is genetically unique
- fades fast
- noses go numb to constant smells within minutes
for instance
dior's sauvage — created in 2015, became the best-selling men's fragrance globally by 2020