Choosing words carefully

Workweasel and I were in a training session of about 25 people. Our role in this session was actually that of trainers but our part of the session had not come up yet. Instead our colleague Encyclopedia Brown (EB) was up there training.

He earns this name because in our department this guy knows everything. We are mental midgets standing next to him and he knows it, but at the same time doesn't flaunt it.

EB is a great guy but often chooses words poorly as is shown in the example below.

A person in the training session asked a question and EB gave a very in-depth, verbose response. The answer wasn't received well but the person who asked diplomatically responded. The rest of the conversation went like this:

Trainee: I appreciate your answer...

EB: Did I answer it adequately?

Trainee: It was a good answer but...

EB: Ahhh, there's a but. I could smell it.

I looked at Workweasel to see if he heard what I heard.

"Did he just say he could smell a but?"

Number of people in the room who laughed = 2