Smell and taste

Wittern, to catch a scent, is built on das Wetter, which is the same word as English weather. In older German, and still underground in a mine, Wetter meant the air itself rather than rain or sun, and to wittern was to test the air: a deer lifts its head into the wind and reads what the air brings. English hunting kept the idea with a different noun, when hounds wind a fox. The noun die Witterung still holds both ends of that history. In a weather report or a building contract it is the weather over a period, bei jeder Witterung; in the forest it is the scent a dog has picked up, die Witterung aufnehmen. The verb has since followed the nose into ordinary life: eine Chance wittern, Verrat wittern, to sense something before anybody has said it. The rest of the list runs from the nose to the tongue.