article_snippet: Inhaling the delicate bouquet of a glass of wine can leave most of us at a loss for words to describe what us are smelling.
article_snippet: 15 words describe smells in the same way as we use blue, red and yellow to describe colours.
article_snippet: Professor Majid has found that the English language has few specific words that are capable of describing smells.
article_snippet: One of the few that is used is the term 'musty', which describes a stuffy and dusty odour of an old book or room that has been unused for a long time.
article_snippet: Most of the time English speakers have to rely upon the source of the smell as a description - using words like fruity or lemon.
article_snippet: When describing smells, English speakers, for example, most often resort to source-descriptors, such as like a banana or fruity, but even these descriptors are not applied accurately.'
highlights_snippet: English speakers tend to rely upon descriptive words like fruity or lemon .
  