To answer your question more directly, you are correct.
Verbs such as smell, hate, and look are indeed non continuous verbs. Note, however, that look has two meanings. It could refer to the act of actually turning your head towards something (you are looking at the TV, for example) or how someone appears to you (the food looks good).
The first definition would make the verb a continuous verb, while the second one, the one that I assume you are talking about, is a non continuous one. A word such as think, which also has these two meanings, has the same thing. For the action (thinking about my weekend plans) it is a continuous verb. For believing in something (I think flowers are beautiful), it is a non continuous verb.
A non continuous verb is one that we typically do not use for the present, past, or future continuous tenses. While you might occasionally see someone say “I am hating this”, most of the time non continuous verbs are used only in the simple tenses (present, past, or future). The reason is that they describe a state that someone is in. There is no action that someone is doing, which means that they do not have to show that an action continues.
Other non continuous verbs include:
- feeling: love, prefer, hate, like, want, wish
- senses: seem, smell, sound, appear, feel, hear, see, taste
- communication: mean, promise, satisfy, agree, deny, disagree, surprise
- thinking: believe, realize, recognize, remember, imagine, know, understand
- other states: be, belong, need, owe, own, possess, concern, depend, involve, matter
[Thanks to English Club for the examples]
Note that there are many more, and some of them can be used continuously in specific circumstances. I do not know what word you are referring to above by “mell” (perhaps you are missing the s in smell?) but we typically do not talk about these in the continuous tense.
The only reason that you would say something like “I am smelling fresh baked cookies” is if you were walking past a bakery and suddenly were exposed to the new smell. Most of the time though, it would not make sense to say “I am smelling” something unless you are talking about a very specific event or action that is happening.
