What is freshness?

Baggs

Pedant alert!

Should have said most bacteria are good. 🙃

I admit I do love some perfumes...
But wouldn't call them fresh!
I do have one that's quite "green" though!

There is also the irritating ‘freshly’, meaning recently as in freshly cut sandwiches, freshly ground black pepper, freshly cut grass. This usage is recent in itself.

Fresh to me means a bracing sea breeze or rain on a hot day.

I chuckle at the deodorant advert for the one that keeps you fresh for 72 hours. The advert shows a female at the gym all sweating and so pleased her deodorant is working. Bet that female hasn't had a shower or wash during the previous 72 hours. Are we really so gullible?

winterwhite

There is also the irritating ‘freshly’, meaning recently as in freshly cut sandwiches, freshly ground black pepper, freshly cut grass. This usage is recent in itself.

Not so recent! I remember seeing an instruction in that Victorian bible of household management, Mrs Beeton, to use "freshly drawn water".

Baggs

MissAdventure

How about expensive perfumes?
Do they stink of chemicals?

Yes.

Because they are made of chemicals.

The more expensive perfumes use natural ingredients - hence the astronomical prices. Cheap scent does, as you say, use cheap chemicals.

Other ingredients in Chanel No. 5 include:
Benzyl alcohol, Benzyl benzoate, Benzyl cinnamate, Benzyl salicylate, Cinnamyl alcohol, Citral, Citronellol, Coumarin, Eugenol, and Farneso

Some of the original natural ingredients aren't available now, apparently.
.didnt it used to be from scent glands in animaks?

Quizzer

Does anyone else have an issue with the word “fresh” as used in advertisements these days.
Your bed linen is ‘so fresh’, which means it smells of laundry product.
Your house is “so fresh” because you use an automatic room spray so that it smells of perfume.
Your deodorant can keep you “fresh” for up to 48 hours! Thank goodness for that!
A fabric spray that makes your jacket “fresh enough” t wear another day.
The only definition of fresh that I can accept is frozen fish “as fresh as the day it was caught”.
Otherwise the word fresh seems to mean ‘smelling of cheap, floral perfume’.
How do other gransnetters define freshness?

I shall soon be 73 and as long as I can remember adverts for toiletries, washing-powders, air-freshernes have used "fresh" in this way. So it is hardly a new thing.

Like you, I use the word fresh to distinguish between frozen foods and food that is sold while it is fresh. I might describe the weather as fresh, meaning on the chilly side, in the spring or autumn, but I don't use the word to discribe my home - clean covers what the adverts mean my fresh to me.

I couldn’t agree more! A whoosh of freshness - ridiculous!

The detergent companies are taking us for fools. Wash at 30" to save money and save the planet. Spend what you save on expensive smells. One ad. tries to tell us smells still linger on clothes after washing. and need something added to the wash.
Gransnetters seem to have the right idea, Hang your washing on the line.

I can't wash clothes at 30 degrees, because they do come out smelly.

MissAdventure

Some of the original natural ingredients aren't available now, apparently.
.didnt it used to be from scent glands in animaks?

I seem to recall some ingredient only found in sperm whales - ambergris? Obviously extremely rare and expensive.

It put me right off Musk perfumes, reading where the musky smell originated, that's for sure!

I totally agree, OP. To me a fresh smell is something natural, like laundry that’s been dried outside as everyone has said, not a horrible synthetic scent.

Fresh means it has a date after which it will not be fresh.

In a weather context it means 'happening'. Fresh air blowing. In the case of bread, inside soft, outside custy and crisp and so on.

Witzend I think ambergris is basically "whale sick". I know they regurgitate it - but have no idea why!

Ready?

Ambergris, also known as ambergrease or grey amber, is a solid, waxy substance that comes from the digestive systems of sperm whales and pygmy sperm whales. It's a flammable substance that's usually a dull grey or blackish color, but can also be brown, jet black, or light or dark grey. When fresh, it has a marine, fecal odor.
Ambergris is thought to form when indigestible parts of squid get stuck in a whale's intestines and bind together, forming a solid mass that grows over many years. It may protect the whale's organs from sharp squid beaks. Only about 1–5% of sperm whales produce ambergris.
Ambergris has been used for centuries and has many uses:
Perfumery: In the West, ambergris is used as a fixative to stabilize the scent of perfumes.
Eastern cultures: Ambergris is used in medicines, potions, and as a spice.
Ice cream: Ambergris has been used to flavor ice cream.
Ambergris can be found floating in or on the shores of

On balance, I'm happy with chemicals.

Freshness is the smell of washing dried on the line, using minimal washing product and no added scent boosters.

MissAdventure.I know it's been found here on our beaches in the past.

Why do they vomit it up if it's useful I wonder? 🤔😂

It's a whole other world it seems, whales and their innards.
Perhaps they vomit some up and then produce more?

Or once it's too big they vomit and then start collecting again??

I totally agree I adore the smell of washing when it’s been on the line outside.