Marilyn Monroe once revealed that Chanel No 5 was the only thing she wore in bed. I am told that this perfume was the very first to be made completely from chemicals; this unromantic fact didn't prevent Coco Chanel from making a very large fortune indeed from it. A Limerick woman, Kate Ryan, wrote to ask about the origin of the word perfume; her dictionary says that it's from Italian and confuses her by telling her that it has some connection with smoke.
Perfume is, indeed, from an Old Italian verb parfumare, from par, through, and fumare, to smoke, and it meant to permeate with smoke, as happens, for example, when priests send out the smoke of incense from a thurible. The word came to France in due course as parfumer, and they made a noun, parfum, which the English borrowed in the sixteenth century.
The first literary reference, from a Herbal written in 1533, shows that burning was the means of releasing the fragrance: "I take for a parfume the ryndes of old rosemary and burned them." This burning was done for many reasons. Juniper berries were burned in a room in an attempt to fumigate it during the plague. 17th century physicians told people to burn flower petals in a patient's bedroom to cure a cold or to alleviate breathing problems; and soon people thought of burning sweet-smelling flowers just for the sake of releasing their perfume.
Our word was originally pronounced with the accent on the second syllable; but Shakespeare, who used the word 10 times, has the accent on the first syllable in seven instances.
Perfume was what we used to call scent when we bought it at Christmas for young ones a lifetime ago. Once upon a time scent meant any kind of strong smell. Caxton, in 1410, wrote about "the sente and savour of the dede man". Scent wasn't applied to a liquid perfume until the 18th century.
The word can be traced to Latin sentire, to feel, which found its way into Old French as sentir, to feel, to smell. In Middle English it became sent.
Fragrance, from Old French fragrance, from Late Latin fragrantia, seems to be replacing both scent and perfume in the vocabulary of women. Milton would be pleased. He was the first to use the noun in literature, in Paradise Lost, where he speaks of Eve "veiled in a cloud of fragrance". A lovely word; may it survive.