Reference point
Smell the collar of a shirt worn all day, a few hours after taking it off.
Do this before you read on. An entry only works when you have just smelled the thing.
Sour, salty, with a savoury note and a layer of rancid butter at the end. Much stronger than fresh sweat.
That is the important point: fresh sweat has almost no smell. The smell appears only once bacteria have had time to work, and it grows over many hours.
It sits in the base stage for that reason — it is a product of time, not of a moment.
How to smell it
Smell the underarm of the shirt, then the back of the same shirt — the two areas smell different because of two different types of sweat gland. Very few people know this.
Why this one is hard
Because it is taboo. Smelling sweat on purpose is something people don’t do, so nobody has the vocabulary for it, even though everyone meets it daily.
Don’t confuse with
This entry
Dried sweat
Animalic family
Old banknotes carry the sweat of the people who handled them. Smell the two side by side and you find the same group of fatty acids.
Scientific note
Eccrine glands all over the body secrete water and salt — almost odourless. Apocrine glands in the armpits and groin secrete a secretion rich in protein and lipids; Staphylococcus and Corynebacterium bacteria break these down into short-chain fatty acids such as isovaleric acid, and into thiols. So the smell is a product of bacteria, not of the body.
In Vietnamese life
A hot, humid climate makes sweat a constant part of daily life in Vietnam. Bathing twice a day is very common, and that shapes both what is considered acceptable and the vocabulary for it.