(no subject)
So, I have a very mild synesthesia thing, in that I associate smells very strongly with certain colors and shapes. This occasionally leads to me having slight difficulty in talking to other people about what things smell like, because I'm trying to translate my colors-and-shapes into smell words. So I'll tell people something smells fruity when it doesn't, really - it just smells very red and a little bit spiky, and so does some fruit.
Today, a gentleman came into the library stinking of gasoline. Later, after he'd left, my coworker said something like, "That was really pungent!" and I have to admit, that seemed like entirely the wrong word. But I looked it up and it does indeed mean what she meant it to mean - it's just that gasoline is a very narrow, yellow-grey smell and I think of pungent things as being a lot wider and possibly a lot more brown.
Brains are funny.
Today, a gentleman came into the library stinking of gasoline. Later, after he'd left, my coworker said something like, "That was really pungent!" and I have to admit, that seemed like entirely the wrong word. But I looked it up and it does indeed mean what she meant it to mean - it's just that gasoline is a very narrow, yellow-grey smell and I think of pungent things as being a lot wider and possibly a lot more brown.
Brains are funny.