stink
pronunciation
How to pronounce stink in British English:
UK [stɪŋk]
How to pronounce stink in American English:
US [stɪŋk]
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- Noun:
- a distinctive odor that is offensively unpleasant
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- Verb:
- be extremely bad in quality or in one's performance
- smell badly and offensively
Word Origin
- stink
- stink: [OE] Stink comes from a prehistoric West Germanic *stingkwan, which also produced German and Dutch stinken. Another form of the base, *stengkw-, gave English stench [OE]. Its ancestral meaning is probably simply ‘smell’, but it early on became specialized to ‘smell bad’.=> stench
- stink (v.)
- Old English stincan "emit a smell of any kind; exhale; rise (of dust, vapor, etc.)" (class III strong verb; past tense stanc, past participle stuncen), common West Germanic (cognates: Old Saxon stincan, West Frisian stjonke, Old High German stinkan, Dutch stinken), from the root of stench. Old English had swote stincan "to smell sweet," but offensive sense also was in Old English and predominated by mid-13c.; smell now tends the same way. Figurative meaning "be offensive" is from early 13c.; meaning "be inept" is recorded from 1924. To stink to high heaven first recorded 1963.
- stink (n.)
- mid-13c., "strong offensive odor," from stink (v.). Sense of "extensive fuss" first recorded 1812.
Example
- 1. But when it goes out , it can leave an unpleasant stink .
- 2. How easy would it be to write if you knew your first draft would stink ?
- 3. One of the reasons skunks have a bad reputation is because they can really stink .
- 4. Instead , most people 's solution to body odor was to wash regularly and then to overwhelm any emerging stink with perfume .
- 5. He was a prankster as a boy , letting off stink bombs in cinemas and putting snowballs in hats .