I realize this is my second post in two days about smells, but it is totally unrelated, I swear.
I am in the UK, but I have been trying to explain this smell to my wife for days…
The bathroom in the place we are renting short-term has a really weird smell in it. It’s not a good smell, but it’s not a smell that makes me want to run out and never go back in. I would describe it as ‘sort of unpleasant.’ Like absolutely tolerable, but I wouldn’t want to hang around.
It doesn’t smell biological. It doesn’t smell like human or animal or mold. It doesn’t smell like some sort of cleaning or construction chemical either.
The closest I have come to be able to describe it is like the stale breath of a smoker, except without the burnt things part. Like everything else in old cigarette smell but that. Except that’s not really right either.
This place used to contain (I think) a printing press and then was turned into apartments, so maybe it’s something left over from that? I don’t know, but I wish I could explain it!
Printing machines use all sorts of organic chemicals for inks and lubricants. Does it smell like fresh asphalt and citrus? Like tar and rubber mixed with fragrance.
To answer your question, I describe the way smells taste. Sweet, sour, bitter, salty, spicy. If you want to be vague, say it smells like wine. Wine smells like anything.
For what it’s worth, that’s not so strange. Our sense of smell is inexorably linked to our sense of taste. That’s why you can often taste a smell if it’s strong enough.
Tar and rubber and asphalt all seem like they could be elements, so yeah, it could very much be that.