Musk is a heavy warm animal scent used in perfume. A musk perfume, the smell of musk, white musk.
It originally came from a gland of the musk deer, and the trade nearly wiped the animal out; every commercial musk now is synthetic, and the synthetics smell cleaner than the original ever did. Musk is what makes a scent last on the skin.
1nounmuskA heavy warm animal scent used in perfume.
“His aftershave had a strong smell of musk that filled the whole lift.”
musk is a scent.
Sanskrit muska means a testicle, from the shape of the deer's gland, reaching English through Persian, Greek and Latin.
Proto-Indo-European
*muh₂s — mouse
Sanskrit
मुष्क — testicle
Ancient Greek
μόσχος
Latin
muscus
Old French
musc
Middle English
muske
English, today
musk
Built from
From Middle English muske, borrowed from Old French musc, from Latin muscus, from Ancient Greek μόσχος, from pal whence Persian مشک. Ultimately from Sanskrit मुष्क (“testicle”), the shape of the gland of animals secreting the substance being compared to human testicles, a diminutive of मूष् (“mouse”), the shape of human testicles being compared to mice, from Proto-Indo-European muh₂s (“mouse”). Cognate with mouse.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA