What is freshness?

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

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.

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

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

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.

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".

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?

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

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.

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

Baggs

Pedant alert!

Should have said most bacteria are good. 🙃

Since I was diagnosed with COPD ten years ago I have avoided all artificial scents, including expensive perfumes.The very sniff of one brings on a very nasty short of breath attack when struggle to breathe, often one so bad I have to go to A&E for nebuliser.
I used to love the smell of incense in church, not now, that with the accompanying smoke makes me run for the door very quick!

welbeck

i thought the title referred to the american usage, where freshness means cheek, impertinence, uppity.
have no views on artificial smells.
just avoid them if you don't like them.
can't really understand what's to be angry about.

I think the OP just meant all the TV ads trying to sell Fresh!! There are so many, often one after the other.

Pedant alert!

Should have said most bacteria are good. 🙃

i thought the title referred to the american usage, where freshness means cheek, impertinence, uppity.
have no views on artificial smells.
just avoid them if you don't like them.
can't really understand what's to be angry about.

It also makes me laugh that in the chiller isle you can buy all sorts of drinks etc with bacteria in, yet go down a few isles to cleaning and you can buy stuff to kill 99% of household germs

Most bacteria is good/useful (germs are only the ones that cause problems). This tends to be overlooked.

I totally agree, you can't artificially create fresh its what happens when you hang clothes outside. Sometimes I buy 2nd hand clothes on ebay & they arrive having the smell of some 'fresh' laundry stuff on it and I wash it out.

It also makes me laugh that in the chiller isle you can buy all sorts of drinks etc with bacteria in, yet go down a few isles to cleaning and you can buy stuff to kill 99% of household germs.

The world has gone crazy! But I'd rather have a few bugs around me than the chemicals!!

Got it in one!

MissAdventure

How about expensive perfumes?
Do they stink of chemicals?

Yes.

Because they are made of chemicals.

How about expensive perfumes?
Do they stink of chemicals?

I have washing on the line. That will smell fresh when I bring it in. The air smells fresher at the coast or in the country than it does in the city. Nothing chemical smells fresh.

Oh dear God yes, all that Fresh!! It’s so fresh!!! - when they actually mean laden with artificial stinks.

How many people actually buy all these stink-boosters to add to the wash - in addition to the laundry product and conditioner - if they use that too?

Certain things have natural aromas, like lemons, or cut grass, which please our senses, but some natural aromas seem unpleasant, such as certain plants or some body odours.
The meaning of “Fresh” as in the dictionary has been misappropriated I believe, by advertisers to sell products.

For me fresh equals odourless. Lovely, awful or unrecognizable is a smell sensation therefore not fresh methinks. Be interested to hear other interpretations.

I like natural aromas, but when you go into the supermarket there are aisles of “air fresheners” which fill the home and cars with chemicals. Likewise artificial scents (chemicals) added to everything from laundry products, to room fresheners, to cleaning products, which cannot be healthy. Scented candles too.