Describing sounds is complicated, partly due to the lack of a commonly understood vocabulary of timbre descriptors. Previous research has developed a lexicon to facilitate communication between sound designers and non-experts. This study investigates the useful- ness and understandability of this lexicon for non-expert listeners in the context of environmental sounds. Through online listen- ing tests, participants categorized pre-labeled sounds using the lexicon’s terms. The results indicate that many descriptors are intuitively understood by a majority of the participants, while others appear to be confusing. An ongoing study extension, which includes assessing the lexicon further on a larger set of everyday environmental sounds, is described.