Waxy & Fatty

What holds it together

The tenth family, added 2026-08-31, and the only one with a single member - deliberately. When waxy_fatty entered the standard it was placed in elemental on the argument that a lipid is a kind of matter, as a bond and a rock are. Measured against all 1,747 published notes the placement failed: waxy_fatty correlates with sulphurous at -0.015 and with mineral at -0.016 - a waxy note is very slightly LESS likely to smell of sulphur or stone. The three are inherently different, and a family that groups them coheres on nothing. The 2026-08-17 facet research said of waxy/fatty that no family fits: 'textural rather than olfactive-directional; the families are organised by direction and role.' That is still true, and this family is the honest conclusion of it rather than a workaround: texture that cuts across food, body, flower and industrial notes alike gets its own axis instead of borrowing someone else's. If the standard ever admits a second textural facet, it lands here.

Smells most like

beeswax - and in the same register, wool, lipstick.

Notes strongest in Waxy & Fatty

Strongest first. A note's family value is the highest of its member facets, not their average - averaging would let a note that is emphatically one thing and nothing else read as weak, which is the opposite of what the family is for.