of “aromatic” is merely “smelly.” “Mephitic,” not a popular word even now, comes from the Latin mephitis, “a foul, pestilential exhalation from the ground, often sulphury in character, as from volcanic regions.” The brimstone odour of the devil—of which more anon—is mephitic.
Now we must here discriminate. Etymologists, delving down among the roots of our spoken language, come, so they say, to a point at which even the simplest epithet, even the plainest description of a sensation, is seen to derive from some object. Obviously this must be so in the beginning, whether or not etymologists are always correct in their particular ascriptions. An adjective describing, and later denoting, a quality, is generalised from some object bearing that quality. A “stony” countenance is a countenance rigid as stone. So in like manner, we are told, even the names of colours, deeply embedded in the language though they be, are ultimately referable to objects bearing that colour. “Brown,” to take the least dubitable instance, is the colour of burnt—“brunt”—things, while “blue,” according to authority, like the Scots “blae,” means “livid ” really, and is connected with “blow,” being the colour left after a blow. (But we say “a black eye” !)
Thus the descriptive epithets not only of smell, but also of sight, are ultimately derived from
