1 [U,C] the pleasant smell that sth has:
The air was filled with the scent of wild flowers. * These flowers have no scent.
2 [U,C,usually sing.] the smell that a person or an animal leaves behind and that other animals such as dogs can follow:
The dogs must have lost her scent. * The hounds were now on the scent of (= following the smell of) the fox.
3 [U] (especially BrE) a liquid with a pleasant smell that you wear on your skin to make it smell nice:
a bottle of scent * She dabbed some scent on her neck.
4 ~ of sth [sing.] the feeling that sth is present or is going to happen very soon:
The scent of victory was in the air. * There is an unmistakeable scent of recovery in the air.
IDIOMS
put / throw sb off the scent to do sth to stop sb from finding you or discovering sth:
She changed taxis to throw her pursuers off the scent.
on the scent (of sth) close to discovering sth:
Scientists are on the scent of a cure.
verb [VN]
1 to find sth by using the sense of smell:
The dog scented a rabbit.
2 (written) to begin to feel that sth exists or is about to happen:
The press could scent a scandal. * By then, the team was scenting victory.
3 ~ sth (with sth) [oftenpassive] to give sth a particular, pleasant smell:
Roses scented the night air. * Scent the room with your favourite aromas.
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for scent is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is scent a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, scent is tagged as noun.
Does scent appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — scent appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
