mephitic
Americanadjective
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offensive to the smell.
-
noxious; pestilential; poisonous.
adjective
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poisonous; foul
-
foul-smelling; putrid
Other Word Forms
- mephitically adverb
Etymology
Origin of mephitic
From the Late Latin word mephīticus, dating back to 1615–25. See mephitis, -ic
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
They invariably come laden with words that seem meant to prove his vocabulary is bigger than yours: flocculent, crapulent, caducous, anaglypta, mephitic, velutinous.
From New York Times
Like a mephitic vapor from a sword-and-sandals epic, it slips under the door frame and into your head.
From New York Times
They have preferred instead to keep them in limbo, and stir their anger and understandable bitterness into a mephitic brew with which to fuel India’s dangerous and extremely effective nationalistic narrative about Kashmir.
From New York Times
A lake of molten sulphur extended the length of an immense canyon, releasing its mephitic vapors in sudden gusts and belches and barring the way of the solitary winged figure who stood at its edge.
From Literature
These moments of reckoning—in which something that once felt exciting begins to seem noxious, mephitic, dangerous—are important to heed.
From The New Yorker
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
