scented

1. 1
   adjective

   Having perfume added to give it a particular smell.

   People with allergies often avoid scented laundry detergent.

   He wrote to her on pale blue scented paper.

   Similarperfumed

   Note

   Here the smell is put in rather than grown: a scented soap, candle or detergent has perfume added, where the fragrant meaning describes jasmine or an orange grove that smells sweet by nature. Shoppers meet the split on labels, since people who react to added perfume look for unscented versions of the same product.

2. 2
   adjective

   Having a pleasant smell; fragrant.

   Warm, scented air drifted in from the orange grove.

   The scented blossoms of the jasmine filled the whole yard at night.

   Similarfragrant, perfumed, sweet-smelling, aromatic

3. 3
   verb

   Past tense and past participle of scent.

   The wolves scented the deer from across the valley.

   The opposition scented victory as the polls turned in its favor.

   Note

   The hunting meaning has the liveliest figurative life: wolves scented the deer, and an opposition scented victory, sensing it before it arrived. With with after a passive, the other meaning takes over, and a room scented with lavender has been given that smell rather than detected it. The verb is regular, so one spelling covers past tense and participle.

4. 4
   adjectivein compounds

   Having a smell of any kind, pleasant or not; used chiefly in combinations such as skunk-scented.

   Rotten-egg-scented gas bubbled up from the hot spring.

   Hikers learn not to crush the plant's foul-scented leaves.

   Note

   Neutral about the smell itself, it lets the first half of a compound decide: skunk-scented, smoke-scented, rose-scented. Before a noun the compound takes a hyphen, as in skunk-scented leaves. Standing alone, without a partner in front, scented is normally heard as pleasant-smelling, which is why the unpleasant smells need the compound.

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