I recently came across a vintage poster from I & M Smith, International Tea & Coffee Brokers (“trading in South Africa since 1915”). There was nary an image on the sheet, but I couldn’t stop staring at it. It was a very simple poster, plain white (now yellowed) paper printed with blocks of sans-serif text. But to me it was like a book of magical incantations, or a first encounter with a foreign language that somehow feels familiar. The poster was framed in the kitchen of a friend’s sublet, and while she was busy at her laptop, I gazed and scribbled notes.
Terms describing dry leaf: chesty, choppy, crepy, curly, make, mushy, nose, ragged, well twisted
Terms describing infused leaf: aroma, biscuity, bright
Terms describing liquors: baggy, bakey, common, cream, harsh, high-fired, point, rasping, raw, stewed
Terms describing green coffee: black jacks, mbuni, peaberry, quakers
Terms describing liquors: erpsig, firey, grassy, rank, rubbery, winey
Amazing, no? I’ve since located these lists online (they’re linked above), and have discovered still more fascinating tea and coffee terms via Google. (Erpsig, by the way, refers to a potato flavor!)
Holy Mountain Trading Co mentions self-drinking — which conjures up the loveliest image of a cup emptying itself with satisfied smackings — and adds shotty, stylish, and well-made to the terms describing dry leaf.
Tealand begins its list with the equally evocative agony of the leaves, and also offers dhool, fannings, tippy, and two and a bud.
One of the challenges I’m always running into in writing is vocabulary to describe sensory qualities. It’s not so hard when it comes to color (red can be carmine, scarlet, crimson, lipstick, blood, and so forth), but how does one describe the egginess of an egg, or the scent of a carnation? I forget that there are actual industries devoted to just this kind of terminology, and that their expertise is at our disposal. Maybe this is why (as you’ll already know, if we’re friends on Facebook) I’m intrigued by perfumes with alluring descriptions, as well — they help me form language for things I’m as yet unable to explain in words.
satsumabug.com | Lisa Hsia 
This is why I love language. If one tries hard enough, and searches for all those words that surely must exist, then we only need a little skill to evoke just about anything.
That’s what I think, right? It’s like having the power to infinitely mix paints to create any color. 😀 And once you add gold leaf into that mix… 😉
This is great. I’m going to have to work these words into a story. And what a great reminder not to become complacent in our writing vocabulary, but to tease out just the right word rather than setting for the first one to come to mind.
This is where *brain strain* turns into brain numbing inertia — and I reach for the thesaurus:) But you are right. I get the Upton Tea Catalog, and the tea descriptions are so fun. Can you imagine sitting in an office 8 hours a day, trying to come up with new descriptions for tea or coffee, or wine?
Sherry, I read a wonderful short story in this anthology of contemporary Arabic fiction where a father and daughter worked at inventing names for paint colors. I wish I could remember which story, but the anthology was huge and I actually read it all, so of course now I can’t recall my favorites. ;b
Thanks, Lisa! I want to see your tea-terminology story. 🙂
This certainly is nice creative and interesting post 🙂
Thanks for sharing.
Thanks, Walter. 🙂 These words tickle my imagination every time I read them!
Love this post, you summed it up quite well for me. One of the main reasons why I started my perfume blog was to improve my writing. My vocabulary was going to hell being a cubicle drone. It’s so difficult to describe scents. Without “olfactory training”, there are just so many ways I can say “this smells nice”. Sometimes I get stuck looking for the right words instead I end up writing about my memories or experiences to describe fragrances.
I love reading your posts; I think you do a wonderful job describing that elusive sensation of scent! Funny you mention writing about your memories — I’ve been working on a creative nonfiction piece that’s modeled after indie perfume descriptions. I’ll probably post it here in about a week. 🙂
Erpsig………….what a fantastic word to hang on to for Scrabble ! It seems we all love the exploration of language. I was listening to a radio documentary some time ago about plural nouns and how they got to be what they are ( a murder of crows etc) and it seems, true enough, it was some guy just sat there making them up and writing them down. Can you believe that?! THere was some explanation for a lot of them, but in the act of collating them, he made some up !
That’s just what I thought when I saw erpsig too! SCRABBLE! To me it looks like such a made-up word — like I just happened to put the tiles that way instead of spelling erspig or persig or what have you.
That is a completely fabulous story about the invention of the plural nouns. 😀 What fun to be the person responsible for introducing them! (How does one get that kind of power, I wonder?)