"distinct odor" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it to describe an odor that is easily identifiable and not easily confused with a different smell. For example, "The room was filled with a distinct odor of mildew."
(26) The distinct odor identity is created by the pattern of odorant receptors activated by the odorant's shape.
"There was a very distinct odor of shredded fresh trees, and it's not a good smell," he said.
But as State Senator Liz Krueger, a Democrat from Manhattan, observes, there are also deep, murky wells of money that have the distinct odor of Albany slush.
It takes the Phaser about 12 minutes to warm up when you turn it on, and there is the distinct odor of something cooking as it does.
That view was highlighted in recent confrontations involving government authorities that left the distinct odor, if not the reality, of a Kremlin crackdown on civil rights.
Gottfried and his colleagues have not attempted this on preexisting fears, but theoretically it could be done — by creating a connection between a phobia and a distinct odor.
But interviews with family members — as well as a distinct odor in the home — ruled out the colorless and odorless gas, he said.
The book covers have a distinct odor, a vestige of the fumes from temple lamps fueled by yak butter.
Arguably, New York state courts cannot handle the litigation they already have, and attracting business that has a distinct odor to it is a dubious achievement.
This revolution began in 1990, when George Preti, a scientist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center, in Philadelphia, isolated the specific molecule (3-methyl-2-hexenoic acid) that produces the distinct odor of underarm sweat.
There comes a moment for riders of the PATH train, a shared, unspoken experience when the air is pierced by a distinct odor.
