Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for February 10, 2025

It sounds like Hobbes is describing a new bottle of wine…..

“Did that smell come from me or you?”

That’s a bit ripe

Fitting winter setting. Maybe animals have words for smells the way the inuit have many words for snow.

At least, they’re not in California!

Some cultures do have words that describe smells. Read about it in The Atlantic a couple of months ago.

Calvin should take lessons from Hobbes.

Tigers are such poets.

Hobbes uses “educated” words.

Here in Collie Fornia I can tell the difference between brush fire and other smoke, but a homeless camp and a trash fire has little difference.

People have words for smells too, but they’re not very nuanced. I think language develops to describe shared experiences (among other reasons)… so if most of us don’t reliably distinguish, say, burning cedar smoke from burning alder smoke, why would we have words to describe the difference?

From the internet:

“Snorky” is a slang term that means “sharp dresser”. It’s often used to describe someone who dresses well.  For example, Al Capone was known for his flashy suits, and members of his gang were expected to dress in a similar manner.

Brambish:used to define the smell of burning wood. “I think it smells a bit brambish outside today.”

brunky

Share definitionDerived from brain and hunky.

A person with a hunky brain.

Someone who is rather intellectually than physically strong. He seems lean, but he’s brunky and witty.

I wish I was as brunky as this hot canadianoverachiever in my class.

Mrs Six has no sense of smell. Sometimes when l remark upon an odor, she’ll ask me to describe it! I tell her she might as well ask me to describe colours.

If it’s something edible, l tell her it smells like it tastes. Things like spent Xmas crackers or burning rubber pose a challenge…

Now, Hobbes is just showing off.

Brambish?

That’s the smell of chipmunks, roasting on an open fire.

Aww, I feel all christmasy now.

Calvin knows what “evocative” means? Excellent

the words he is using.. they probably just finished watching the banana splits.

There’s one place in my neighborhood that likes to heat with wood – it’s right outside my back door! The only other smoke is “skunk” weed.

Guessing a feline smeller is as sophisticated at a canine nose. Hobbes’ nose is just that much more refined due to his continued association with Cal, who is often right up to his ears in messes of all kinds.

I asked Artificial Intelligence for synonyms for “smell.” I got over 20 responses. These included its use as a noun and as a verb.

Smell is our most primal sense. Even single cell animals and plants have the ability to detect chemicals. Smell is associated with the most privative part of our brain. Smells can easily kick off memories.

To smell something, you have to take molecules of the substance into your body to detect them.

Allegedly, a dog’s sense of smell is 100 times more sensitive than a man’s and a woman’s sense of smell is 10 times greater than a man’s. I think this explains why men can hang out it locker rooms and are willing to stiff that thing that’s been in the back of the refrigerator since the Regan Administration to see if it is still good.

How does he feel about napalm in the morning?

I’ve read this comic enough times that I think I would now know “brambish” if I were to smell it.

I love the smell of Brunk in the morning!

Due to molecular action, we smell by inhaling molecules of the actual substance, and our brain analyzes, them, and identifies it according to what we’ve been taught stuff is called. Think about that next time you smell a fart.

Hobbes sounds a little like Lewis Carroll who invented the word “snark” to describe a creature he thought of as a cross between a snail and a shark. Others have taken the more frightening image of a cross between a snake and a shark from this word.

Lewis Carroll also made up words in “The Ballard of the Jabberwock” which begins “Tis brillig and the slithy tothes…”

It smells like acidic burning plastic. It is a Duraflame.

onomatopoeias … snorky, brambish, brunky

Smell is the sense most strongly linked to brain areas that are involved in emotion, learning, and memory so it’s not very surprising. That’s what enjoy most about walking outside and also after quitting smoking. It’s literally like walking down memory lane!

Brambish:“Used to define the smell of burning wood.“I think it smells a bit brambish outside today.”

Now I want to know what snorky, brambish and brunky smell like.

Smells are alway triggers for memories in time, at least from my experience. ;-)

When I was young, autumn brought the smell of burning leaves and Old Briar pipe tobacco.

Let me use this opportunity to recommend the best book I’ve read this century: An Immense World, by science writer Ed Yong. It’s all about animal senses, including ones we’ve only just discovered, like the electric and magnetic senses. The sense of smell gets a whole lot of ink. Really, I can’t praise this book highly enuf. Something astounding on virtually every page.

When you have a well developed sense of smell you have so many different words. Smell is triggered by little particles of what you are smelling being inhaled and passing over your internal nasal smelling organs. Remember that the next time open a chocolate bar or enter a stable that needs cleaning out.

And he’s a cat! Can you imagine how detailed a dog could get?

Sign him up as a “smoke chaser”!!!

Ooh, I hate brunky! Causes my sinuses no end of pericombobulations.

One thing the Simpsons did not do first. Sorry Lisa.

A lot of mornings I feel brunky.

I miss our old electric fireplace.

Hobbes’s adjectives are at least as good as many of the words that have actually made it into the dictionary.

Like Calvinist mentioned above, this one reminds me of the “Jabberwocky” poem.

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”

He chortled in his joy.