zapach
“zapach” — smell, scent in Polish. Noun, level A2, topic — food and drink. From pachnąć, "to smell nice": za-pach is "what smells", and the verb pachnie lands softly. Neutral word: przyjemny zapach — "a pleasant scent". The bad kind is smród — already a stench. In a live sentence: “Zapach chleba jest w kuchni” — The smell of bread is in the kitchen. One of 177 words in the set “food and drink” in the Polish course.
In short
| Written in Polish | zapach |
| Translation | smell, scent |
| Part of speech | noun |
| Level | A2 |
Why it looks that way
From pachnąć, "to smell nice": za-pach is "what smells", and the verb pachnie lands softly. Neutral word: przyjemny zapach — "a pleasant scent". The bad kind is smród — already a stench.
A word with a story stays in memory longer than one learned as a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.
In a live sentence
A single word almost never appears alone in conversation. A sentence shows where it fits and what stands next to it.
- Zapach chleba jest w kuchniThe smell of bread is in the kitchen
Nearby words: food and drink
A menu, a market, a shop sign, the question “what is this?”. Food is the most frequent subject of the first weeks and the safest excuse to start talking.
- kawacoffeeFeminine, and the gender shows: ta kawa. It is brewed weaker than in Italy, and Poland grows plenty of its own kinds: kawa z mlekiem — "coffee with milk".
- herbatateathe h is sounded: "her-BAH-tah"
- wodawaterMatches sound and spelling at once. Ask for water in a café with plain woda and you will get sparkling; still water is niegazowana, requested separately.
- chlebbreadA word the whole Slavic family shares, recognizable on sight. Masculine: ten chleb.
- mlekomilkNo full-vowelpattern here: the long form that some Slavic languages keep was cut to mleko. Neuter gender.
- piwobeerMatches sound and spelling letter for letter. Beer is measured by size: duże — large, małe — small.
- winowineMatches sound and meaning at once. Poland is not a wine country — beer is the likelier order — but the word earns its keep in shops.
- jedzeniefoodFrom jeść, "to eat". Both the food and the process: jedzenie na wynos — "food to go".
- sercheeseSaid exactly the way it is spelled. Cottage cheese here is biały ser — "white cheese" — and it is a different product under the same word.
- mięsomeatsaid "MYEN-shoh" — the nasal ę gives the softness
Test yourself
Five questions from the same set — “food and drink”. Recalling a spelling from meaning is harder than knowing a familiar word on sight, and therefore more useful.
- How do you say “smell, scent” in Polish?
From pachnąć, "to smell nice": za-pach is "what smells", and the verb pachnie lands softly. Neutral word: przyjemny zapach — "a pleasant scent". The bad kind is smród — already a stench.
- How do you say “wine” in Polish?
Matches sound and meaning at once. Poland is not a wine country — beer is the likelier order — but the word earns its keep in shops.
- How do you say “water” in Polish?
Matches sound and spelling at once. Ask for water in a café with plain woda and you will get sparkling; still water is niegazowana, requested separately.
- How do you say “meat” in Polish?
Do not confuse it with miasto, "city" — two letters apart. A vegetarian needs the phrase bez mięsa — "without meat".
- How do you say “beer” in Polish?
Matches sound and spelling letter for letter. Beer is measured by size: duże — large, małe — small.
How not to forget this word
Reading a word and remembering it are different jobs. A day later, little survives of a single reading — and that is not bad memory, that is how memory works.
- This has been tested on foreign words too. The difference shows up most when you test yourself a few days later rather than straight away.checked many timesKim & Webb, 2022, Language Learning 72(2) · 48 experiments, 3,411 participants, 98 comparisons.
- Recalling beats re-reading. Covering the translation and trying to remember it does more than reading it ten more times.checked many timesAdesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · 188 experiments, 272 comparisons. g = 0.61; against plain re-reading 0.51, against passive review 0.93.
- An answer you worked out yourself sticks better than one handed to you.checked many timesBertsch et al., 2007, Memory & Cognition 35(2) · 86 studies, 445 comparisons, d = 0.40.
Frequently asked
How do you say “smell, scent” in Polish?
«zapach». In a live sentence: “Zapach chleba jest w kuchni” — The smell of bread is in the kitchen. Noun, level A2, from the set “food and drink”.
Why does this word look the way it does?
From pachnąć, "to smell nice": za-pach is "what smells", and the verb pachnie lands softly. Neutral word: przyjemny zapach — "a pleasant scent". The bad kind is smród — already a stench. A word with a story stays in memory longer than a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.