Other forms: scents
A scent is a distinctive smell, often a faint one. The scent of pine, follow the scent, a strong scent.
It is what an animal tracks and what perfume is sold as. A dog's nose is good enough to follow a trail hours old and to tell the direction of travel from how the scent fades along it. Note the silent c, which was added by scribes and was never in the French word.
1nounscentA distinctive smell, often a faint one.
“The scent of roses filled the garden on warm evenings.”
scent is a smell.
Old French sentir means to feel or smell, from Latin sentire. The c was added in English by mistaken analogy.
Proto-Indo-European
*sent- — to feel
Latin
sentiō — to feel, sense
Old French
sentir — to feel, perceive, smell, sense
Middle English
sent
English, today
scent
From Middle English sent and senten, from Old French sentir (“to feel, perceive, smell, sense”), from Latin sentiō (“to feel, sense”). Ultimately from Proto-Indo-European sent- (“to feel”), and thus related to stq Sin (“sense”), West Frisian sin (“sense”), Dutch zin (“sense, meaning”), Low German Sinn (“sense”), lb Sënn (“sense, perception”), German Sinn (“sense”). The -c- appeared in the 17th century, possibly by influence of ascent, descent, etc., or by influence of science.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA