Language shapes reality. The words that we use to describe
physical things and abstract ideas help shape how we see them.
The way we express our thoughts clarify what we are thinking.
The words that we use to describe flavors change what and how we
taste. Case in point: how many times have I been to a wine
tasting or shared a bottle with company, listened to someone
else say that they taste mushroom flavors, and suddenly find
myself recognizing mushrooms in the wine, too? Partly power of
suggestion, perhaps, but not entirely so; if myself come up with
a descriptor to which I can put a name, I find myself coming
back to that flavor over and over again. Even if other,
unspecified flavors are equally (or more) prominent, my brain
has a handle – a specific word – to draw it back to the flavor I
recognize. What if I had (gasp!) never eaten mushrooms? I would
never come up with the notion that a wine tasted like mushrooms,
and I wouldn’t be able to recognize what someone else meant if
they called a wine “mushroomy.