the verbal OLFACTIONARY

The language of smell is a highly specialized language. Here is a list of useful terms if this is a language you would also like to speak. The main sources for this list are Charles Sell’s The Chemistry of Fragrances: From Perfumer to Consumer, 2nd ed. and Perfumes: the Guide by Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez, but I will continue to add additional terms and sources from others as I come across them. Also–many perfume glossaries include adjectives, which I hope to avoid. In my world, especially in my smell world, I like to think that verbs and nouns suffice….

1. Absolute: The alcoholic extraction of the concrete.

2. Accord: A blend of perfume ingredients balanced in odor intensity that produces a pleasing effect. An accord is generally used as a perfume building block, much the way musical chords are the pleasing vertical units of a song.

3. Aldehyde: An organic compound that ends in a C=O(H) group. Perfumers use many different aldehydes in their palettes, but the characteristic smell of straight-chain aliphatic aldehydes C10, C11, and C12 was first introduced in Chanel no.5.

4. Anosmia: An inability to smell that can be genetically inherited and present at birth, induced by drugs, or the result of traumatic injury to the nose, brain, or cranio-facial structures. Depending on the cause, this inability can be generalized (an inability to smell anything) or specific to certain molecules or classes of molecules.

5. Balance: A combination of perfume notes such that no particular note dominates or overwhelms the others.

6. Base: This word is used in two ways in the perfume industry: 1) is to define the unperfumed medium, such as soap, lotion, etc. 2) a perfume base is also a balance of top, middle, and end notes in a fragrance. Unlike an accord (which is balanced vertically) this balance refers to the way a perfume smells over time (horizontal balance). ** According to LT and TS, a perfume base is “a prefabricated building block of fragrance composed of various materials and used as a single material by perfumers, such as the famous peach base Persicol.”

7. Bottle-Note: The perception of the perfumed product on opening the bottle closure. Consists of perfume plus chemicals used in base (e.g. shampoo).

8. Brief: Document provided by clients to perfumers defining their perfume requirements.

9. Calone: A synthetic aromachemical with a distinctive fresh melon-aquatic character, used heavily in the 90’s.

10. Chypre: A genre of perfume built on a structure made famous by Coty’s Chypre from 1917, based on oakmoss, cistus labdanum, and bergamot. Chypres can be furter divided into floral chypres, fruity chypres, leather chypres, and so-on.. (LT and TS, The Guide)

11. Cologne: Fragrance genre dating from teh 1700’s (the oldest?). Traditionally made from a blend of citrus, florals, herbs, and woods. (LT and TS)

12. Concrete: The hydrocarbon extraction of the plant material.

13. Damascone: Powerful materials with rosy-apple smells, related to the ionones of violets.

14. Dihydromyrcenol: Woody-citrus material much used in recent masculines.

15. Drydown: The late stage of a fragrance that develops after the top and heart (or middle) notes subside and before the smell completely fades.

16. End-notes: The substantive part of a perfume comprising the less volatile components of the fragrance (which thus linger longest). Often crystalline, resinous, or high relative molecular mass (low volatility) substance in the juice…

17. Essential Oil: The steam distilled oil obtained from plant material.

18. Ester: Combination of an acid and an alcohol, that typically but not always gives a fruity smell.

19. Expressed: A cold process in which the oil contained in the outer skin of a citrus fruit is released by rasping or compressing the citrus fruit. Sometimes also known as ‘cold-pressed’ oil. Citrus oils must be obtained in this way as they would degrade and break down if a normal steam distillation process were used.

20. Fixative: A material of higher molecular weight used to prolong the effect of the more volatile ingredients in a perfume formula in an attempt to equalize the rate of evaporation of the component ingredients so that the perfume will last longer. Molecules with low vapour pressure are used; these are often resinous, crystalline, or of higher molecular mass.

21. Formula: The recipe–the list of ingredients and their proportions produced by the perfumer that is required to make the perfume which has the odor-effect desired by the client.

22. Fougere: Masculine genre based on the original Fougere Royale, an abstract composition of lavender, oakmoss, and the tobacco-and-hay note of coumarin.

22. Gourmand: A subset of orientals that has become more popular in recent years, designed to smell distinctly dessert-like with emphasis on vanilla.

23. Green: An adjective, used to describe the smell of cut grass or leaves in a perfume.

24. Headspace: Headspace is the air above or surrounding a fragrant substance, which contains volatile compounds. Any form of analytical procedure that samples and analyzes this vapour is called “Headspace analysis”.

25. Hedione: An aromachemical used to impart a feel of dewy freshness to florals, first used significantly in Eau Sauvage.

26. Helional: A synthetic aromachemical with a milky-metallic character.

27. Indole: A molecule with an inky, bitter, fecal odor, which occurs naturally both in human feces and in white flowers, such as jasmine and orange blossom.

28. Ionone: Type of aromachemical (a ketone, actually) that gives the main smell of violets. Ionones are unusual in that they also temporarily desensitize the smell receptors in the nose, preventing other smells from being detected and giving the violet’s scent a characteristically elusive quality.

29. Irone: Type of odor chemical that gives the main smell-character of iris.

30. Lactone: Cyclic ester structures which give a creamy-fruity smell to fragrances.

31. Leather: In perfume, characterized by bitter-smelling isoquinolines or smoky-smelling rectified birch tar, to replicate the smell of the tanning chemicals used to prepare leather.

32. Middle-Notes: The heart of a perfume; the main theme. This should last for a few hours on the skin.

33. Muguet: Lily of the Valley

34. Natural: Perfume materials of natural origin–derived directly from nature.

35. Nature Identical: Perfume ingredients identical to those occurring in nature, but which are derived synthetically.

36. Niche: Type of fragrance firm that produces in limited quantity and sells in few shops.

37. Note: An isolated smell in a fragrance.

38. Oriental: A fragrance genre typified by an emphasis on amber. The oldest of these fragrances still in production is Shalimar. The genre has subgenres: floral orientals, spicy orientals, woody orientals, and gourmand orientals.

39. Osmophore: The spatial arrangement of relative distances between key atoms or functional groups in a series of active molecules in odorant perception.

40. Phenols: smell like tar.

41. Resin: Thick, brown, sticky plant extracts such as labdanum or styrax that resemble molasses, used frequently in amber orientals or in chypres for their sweet smells and fixative qualities.

42. Schiff’s Base: Organic compound formed by reaction between n aldehyde or ketone with a primary amine.

43. Sillage: French for the wake left in the water by passing ships; fragrance industry jargon for the scent trail left by a perfume at a distance from the wearer.

44. Smelling Blotter: Thin strip of highly absorbent paper used to assess the effect of a fragrance as it evaporates from top-note through to the end-notes. Also know as a smelling strip or “mouillette”. On end of the blotter is dipped into the straint perfume oil of the oil diluted in alcohol.

45. Soliflore: A fragrance meant to represent a singe flower. For example, a rose soliflore is designed to smell solely of rose–as opposed to a bouquet.

46. Synthetics: Those materials produced or obtained synthetically which are not identical to those found in nature–neither natural nor nature-identical.

47. Top-Notes: The most volatile components (lowest molecular weights) of a perfume. These generally last a matter of minutes on the skin.

48. Trickle-Down: The fragrance oil used in the alcoholic variant in a range is adapted for use in other variants in the range such as soap, anti-perspirant, etc. This usually involves cheapening and substitution or perfume ingredients for stability

49. White Flowers: Flowers with white petals such as jasmine, tuberose, and gardenia. They often contain indole (see above), which causes the characteristic browning of the petals in time.

50. Woody-Amber: A type of synthetic aromachemical often used to replace more expensive natural woods and ambergris–smell like very strong versions of rubbing alcohol.