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Sensory words
Learn sensory words, which describe how we see, hear, smell, taste and touch.
Sensory words describe how we experience the world: how we see, hear, smell, taste or feel something. They turn a flat description into one a reader can step into.
Helen Keller's essay is full of them, which makes sense: it's an essay about the senses! Your book asks you to sort her words by sense:
| Sense | Her word | In the essay | Others from the text |
|---|---|---|---|
| sight | panorama | "the magnificent panorama of light with which the sun awakens the sleeping earth" | glimpse, behold, pageant |
| hearing | music | "hear the music of voice, the song of a bird, the mighty strains of an orchestra" | strains, song |
| smell | perfume | "smell the perfume of flowers" | |
| taste | relish | "taste with relish each morsel" | |
| touch | rough | "the rough, shaggy bark of a pine" | smooth, delicate, shaggy, quiver |
Smell has the fewest words of its own in English, so we often borrow from the other senses. And to relish something is to enjoy its taste: the word carries both flavour and pleasure.
Now add your own to each sense:
| Sense | More words |
|---|---|
| sight | gleaming, dim, scarlet |
| hearing | crackle, hush, clatter |
| smell | musty, fragrant, smoky |
| taste | bitter, tangy, sweet |
| touch | silky, gritty, icy |
Keep a list and use it when you write. Try remembering a trip with all five senses: what you saw, heard, smelt, tasted and touched. A paragraph with a sensory word in every sentence reads very differently from one with none!
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