quick whiff
- noun
:
rapido olfateo
- The snap of a few sparks, a quick whiff of ozone... ...and the lamp blazed forth in unparalleled glory.
I'm not mad keen on the citrusy sense, I have to say, but let me give this a quick whiff.
- I'm not mad keen on the citrusy sense, I have to say, but let me give this a quick whiff.
Examples
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More quiet moments passed, and, unable to sit without fidgeting and animatedly thinking, he got up and circled aimlessly around the table, and then bounced outside for a quick whiff of the quiet night air.
Fiction book (1996) -
The dog eagerly took a quick whiff of the delicious treats hidden in the bag.
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One quick whiff of something called potassium argon, and they can tell the age of the stone, where it was quarried, when it was cut and probably the name and address of the man who did it.
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She took a quick whiff of the fresh flowers to enjoy their delightful scent.
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Before starting to cook, he inhaled a quick whiff of the spices to gather his thoughts.
Synonyms
84
1.1
A quick breath in through the nose to check a smell
23
4.4
A small, faint smell you notice briefly
How Brief
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase 'quick whiff' is directly compositional: 'quick' (brief) modifies 'whiff' (a puff or small smell), so the meaning 'a brief inhalation to take in the scent' follows straightforwardly from the constituents. This pattern is semantically transparent and common cross-linguistically, so a B1 learner who knows both words would readily infer the MWE's meaning.
Etymology
The phrase quick whiff comes from the image of someone opening a jar and taking one very short breath to catch the smell, where the fast little breath is the whiff and quick shows it lasts only a moment. So, quick whiff means 'a brief smell' or 'a short sniff to catch a scent'.