sillage

Etymology

Borrowed from French sillage (literally “wake”).

sillage means the trail of scent left behind by one who wears perfume. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 89 out of 100.

Why this word is great

SILLAGE — [Noun] The fragrant trail left in the air by a moving person wearing perfume. Borrowed from French sillage, meaning "wake" (as in the trail left by a boat in water). Unlike "projection," which measures a scent's immediate, radial reach, or "longevity," which charts its duration on skin, sillage is a spectral geography of motion, an olfactory silhouette of passage. It is the phantom trace of citrus and sandalwood in a just-vacated elevator, the faint ribbon of jasmine lingering on a garden path, or the warm, ambery cloud hovering in the folds of a curtain—the most elegant evidence that to be somewhere is, inevitably, to begin leaving it.

noun

The trail of scent left behind by one who wears perfume.“The smell was everywhere back then, especially at college parties, which reeked of the stuff (I also remember sillage clouds of Eternity For Women hanging in the air as well). […] [Drakkar Noir] had face-melting power, with 24-hour longevity and sillage that could kill a plant.”