I sometimes catch a whiff of something that reminds me very strongly, but very vaguely, of a time in my past. Different whiffs for different times. It's not a single identifiable smell and a single identifiable memory (i.e. chicken soup –> that time in Grade 10 when I had mononucleosis and my aunt took care of me). It's more of a vague smell that takes you back to a general time in your life.
How would you describe this? I'm open to both scientific and creative expressions of this phenomenon.
Allow me to add that this is not deliberate nor always positive. And I am not asking broadly about remembering the past, but about how smell, in particular, sparks a sense of past time or places.
Best Answer
Redolent would be useful in this case.
Its origins are in a word simply meaning to give an odor, and it now is used most commonly to describe an evocative smell, and often one that triggers nostalgia.
Modern usage requires it to be attributed to something, either an item the smell reminds you of ("redolent of ripe cherries") or more figuratively of a memory :
It is generally used in a more positive, nostalgic sense but is not required to be.