You probably thought I'd forgotten my New Year's Resolution to learn new words. I haven't done too well keeping this up, so here's a whole batch, and I found them all in the same book review of
What the nose knows By Avery Gilbert published in
JAMA, 2009;301(16):1719-1720. It was the mention of David Sedaris by reviewer Alan R. Hirsch of the Chicago Smell & Taste Treatment & Research Foundation that sucked me in:
"Avery Gilbert is the David Sedaris of the nostril, the Mark Twain of the nasal passages. In this irreverent tome, he manages to interweave olfaction and the science of smell with virtually all aspects of human endeavor, from the scatological to the heavenly. This fun, relaxed approach can be vaticinated from the opening page, which quotes the 1967 Mad Magazine satire "Fantastench Voyage." Like the Ygdrasil, the mythical Norse ash tree that unifies heaven and earth, Gilbert seamlessly intertwines the scientific with pop culture, enlightening the reader all the while about common, oft-repeated olfactory misperceptions. For instance, how many odors can humans detect? 10,000? 30,000? 400,000? As Gilbert traces the evolution of this answer, he exposes the number as a myth perpetrated from generation to generation of smell researchers, like a perverted game of telephone. (The answer: no one knows.)"
You probably spotted some unfamiliar words--like
vaticinated, which means foretold or predicted. New to me. As were
decoction, phantageusia, ventoseness, noisome, hyposmia, anosmia, retronasal, orthonasal and
habromania. In fact, I'd settled down to read a short book review with my lunch, and it took 30 minutes and 3 dictionaries, a
Webster's New Collegiate, a
Webster's 2nd International, and a
Taber's. I'm not sure if these are Gilbert's words, or Hirsch's, but I think I'm caught up for awhile. Ygdrasil?
.
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