Smell You Later

Nose
Why does saying “I smell” mean something bad about yourself, but “I see”, “I touch”, “I taste”, and “I hear” do not?

2 comments

Jordan says:

05-Nov-2010 at 9:01 am

Because its a reflexive word that can mean the transitive act of inhailing air against the olfactory nerve fibers in your noise or it can mean the intransitive act of emitting oders. The later is usually implied when your sentance lacks an object. “I see” can be used without an object to indicate that you understand, but this doesn’t have the same secondary intransitive sense. To see is always transitive.

I’m starting to wonder if your questions are really just rhetorical. In which case, I posit nothing.

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Conall says:

05-Nov-2010 at 4:31 pm

And why is it that we assume “I smell” means “I smell BAD”?

We don’t assume one is seeing badly, touching badly, etc….in those cases the good or bad nature needs to be explicit?

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