Defining sensory descriptors: Towards writing guidelines based on terminology

International audienceDescriptive analysis relies upon the use of sensory descriptors. They are words generally associated to a definition aimed at helping their understanding. However, the writing rules for such definitions remain implicit. The present work is a collaborative attempt from sensory analysts and linguists to get further insight into how definitions are elaborated.Definition formulations were analyzed according to linguistic criteria, syntactic (type and number of nouns, verbs and adjectives) as well as semantic ones (relations of synonymy, metaphor or analogy between the descriptors and their definitions). Such a linguistic analysis was performed on one hundred descriptor definitions collected from various sources. The selected list of descriptors referred to both food and non-food products as well as visual, olfactory, gustative, tactile and acoustic properties. From these analyses and a terminology expertise developed in linguistics and psycholinguistics, we suggest a set of explicit guidelines to elaborate more accurate definitions of sensory descriptors. These guidelines concern the structure and content of definitions