The Rice University Neologisms Database

One description of how a fire smells on a cold winter day. Mr. Watterson needed nonsense words to describe smells in English (the specific words do not exist to describe the evocative smell.) Snorky, brambish, and brunky are the three words he chose. All three have standard adjectival endings (‘-y’ or ‘-ish’) and it is possible that the roots were carefully chosen. ‘Brambish’ could be related to the English word ‘bramble’ (a prickly shrub or bush, from OE ‘braembel’) and may describe either the smell of a burning bush of this type (specifically, of genus Rubus) or could describe an angry, raging fire by metaphor: the fire’s ‘personality’ seems prickly.