Sensory Words · Issue 1
Why we can recognize an odor yet fail to name it
We smell something. It is certainly familiar. We know that it may belong to a kitchen, a fruit, or a household cleaning product. We might call it fresh, sharp, or sweetish. We may even picture the place where we encountered it before. And yet the name does not come.
Then someone gives us two letters: le… Lemon, we say at once. The word seemed to be there already, but we could not reach it. The English expression tip-of-the-nose was coined for this experience: the name of the odor sits metaphorically on the tip of the nose, just as a word can sit on the tip of the tongue.
The Missing-Letters Experiment
In 2025, Eda Nur Capkan and Funda Yildirim published a study on cues that can facilitate odor naming. Forty participants smelled stimuli from the Sniffin’ Sticks test. After each odor, the screen displayed either a color patch associated with the source or a fragment of the word to be retrieved.
Verbal cues allowed participants to identify odors more accurately. EEG recordings also showed different patterns: the color condition engaged a broader cortical network, whereas the lexical condition showed more focused connectivity, especially in frontotemporal circuits associated with linguistic and semantic processing.
The sample was small and the odors came from a standardized test. Even so, the experiment makes an essential distinction visible: we may possess information about an odor without being able to turn that information into its name on our own. Sometimes a lexical fragment is enough for the connection to be completed.
What Do We Know Before We Know the Name?
When we say “I know this smell,” we may mean different things. We may know that we have encountered it before, whether we like or dislike it, in what setting we might find it, what memory it evokes, or what word identifies it. These forms of knowledge do not necessarily emerge together.
An odor may feel familiar without our recognizing its source. It may evoke someone’s home without allowing us to identify the substance that was present. We can judge it pleasant or unpleasant long before assigning it a name.
Does the Test Measure the Nose — or Words as Well?
An olfactory test may ask a person to smell an odor and name it freely. Or it may offer four alternatives, one correct and three plausible. The first task requires perception, recognition, semantic memory, and lexical retrieval. In the second, the participant can compare the stimulus with words that are already available.
A 2025 study analyzed responses from 2,479 Swedish adults aged 58 to 102 who completed the sixteen-item Sniffin’ TOM in both free-naming and cued-recognition conditions. In the free-naming task, 66.4 percent of errors were omissions; omissions also explained 87.7 percent of the age-related differences. Performance in free naming was associated not only with olfactory efficiency but also with vocabulary, verbal fluency, and episodic memory.
Errors can themselves be informative. Calling an orange odor “lemon” is not the same as perceiving nothing at all. The error shows that recognition has reached the citrus category without arriving at precise identification.
The Problem May Also Lie in the Answer Options
The familiarity of labels used in tests changes over time and across cultures. Even a standardized test can age: everyday objects, foods, and products change, and so does the likelihood that their names will be recognized.
An error can therefore arise at at least three levels: the stimulus was not adequately detected; the odor was perceived but not recognized; or the source was recognized but its name was not accessible or familiar.
Why Do We Say “Smell of…”?
In everyday Italian, as in many European languages, odors are named mainly through their sources: smell of coffee, scent of rose, stink of burning, vanilla aroma. The formula “smell of…” does not directly describe a sensory quality. It proposes a hypothesis about the substance or object from which that quality originates.
This is a useful strategy. Odors often help us detect something that is not visible. Knowing where the stimulus comes from may be more urgent than defining its abstract qualities. Yet dependence on source creates an obvious difficulty: when we fail to recognize the object, we risk being left almost without words.
Languages Do Not All Smell the Same Way
Difficulty in naming odors was long presented as a universal limitation of the human mind. Comparative studies have weakened that assumption. Some languages possess abstract olfactory terms that do not refer to a single source. Jahai, spoken in the Malay Peninsula, has a small but salient vocabulary devoted to general odor qualities.
This does not mean that every Jahai speaker has biologically superior smell. It shows instead that naming a sensation also depends on the categories a language provides, the cultural importance given to olfaction, how often odors are discussed, and how attention is trained.
Does the Name Change What We Smell?
A word does not create from nothing the odor that reaches the nose. But it can guide how we interpret it. A verbal label contributes to the context in which a stimulus is recognized and classified; consistent use of the same labels can facilitate the learning of olfactory categories.
Language does not rule without limits. Labels may alter judgments and identifications without necessarily changing the ability to discriminate whether two odors are the same or different. A word can change interpretation without rewriting every level of sensory experience.
A Language Poor in Smells?
To say that Italian has relatively few abstract olfactory terms is not to call it an odorless language. Italian has nouns such as odore, profumo, puzza, aroma, sentore, effluvio, and esalazione; it has verbs of perception and verbs that represent emission and movement.
When a precise term is missing, language recruits the other senses. An odor can be sweet, bitter, warm, cold, dry, soft, sharp, light, or dark. It can envelop, invade, linger, seep in, or assault.
This is where experimental research meets the linguistic work developed in Sulla punta del naso. The relative scarcity of abstract terms does not produce silence: it fuels source-based naming, metaphor, synesthesia, and representations of movement. Yet one asymmetry remains striking: we are often quicker to judge an odor than to describe it.
When the Name Finally Arrives
To say “lemon,” it is not enough for molecules to reach the olfactory receptors. We have to isolate the stimulus, compare it with previous experience, recognize its familiarity, form a hypothesis about the source, and retrieve the corresponding word.
Two letters may then be enough. Not because they contain the odor, but because they point toward the lexical path we could not find. It is in this imperfect encounter — between what the nose recognizes and what language manages to say — that one of the most fascinating fabrics of perception begins.
Essential Reading
Capkan, E. N.; Yildirim, F. (2025), “Cues for Odor Naming Affect Performance and Brain Connectivity”, Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 19, 1671670. DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2025.1671670.
Hörberg, T.; Olofsson, J. K.; Raj, R.; Laukka, E. J.; Larsson, M. (2025), “Free Odor Identification Engages Domain-General Cognitive Abilities in Old Adults”, Chemical Senses, 50, bjaf049. DOI: 10.1093/chemse/bjaf049.
Majid, A.; Burenhult, N. (2014), “Odors Are Expressible in Language, as Long as You Speak the Right Language”, Cognition, 130(2), pp. 266–270. DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2013.11.004.
Olofsson, J. K.; Gottfried, J. A. (2015), “The Muted Sense: Neurocognitive Limitations of Olfactory Language”, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 19(6), pp. 314–321. DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2015.04.007.
Perugini, M. (2026), Sulla punta del naso. Per una linguistica sensoriale dell’olfatto, TAB Edizioni. ISBN: 979-12-5669-362-7.
