smelly
Americanadjective
-
smellier,
comparative
-
smelliest
superlative
adjective
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Adjectives
Etymology
Origin of smelly
Explanation
Smelly things give off a bad odor. After her joyful swim in a swampy lake, your dog will probably be smelly. You could call smelly things stinky, putrid, or rank. Your brother's sweaty feet are smelly, and your neighbor's cabbage soup is smelly too. While things like flowers and homemade gingerbread are fragrant or aromatic, smelly things — like your neighborhood on garbage day — are just plain smelly. We know that smelly comes from smell, "odor, aroma, or stench," which followed the verb smell, "emit or perceive an odor," but the word's origin is unknown.
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.
See Examples For:
Mexico is deploying specialized navy ships to fight a massive influx of sargassum on the country's Caribbean beaches, authorities said Thursday, as the smelly seaweed threatens the crucial tourism sector.
From Barron's ● Jul. 30, 2026
“It’ll certainly be smelly and noxious, and bacteria and things are going to be growing in it,” he said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 21, 2026
Never having to huff your own engine exhaust is even better—you just don’t notice how smelly gas cars can be until you’ve been out of one for a while.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 13, 2026
One used the codeword "smelly bananas" to signal things were getting too much.
From BBC ● Dec. 21, 2025
“Ugh. It’s wet. More of that weird smelly water stuff.”
From "Aru Shah and the End of Time" by Roshani Chokshi
Cities including Atlanta, Nashville and Louisville are so shorthanded they have temporarily stopped collecting things like recyclable bottles, cans, paper and plastic, yard waste or oversized junk to focus on the grosser, smellier stuff.
From Seattle Times ● Jan. 14, 2022
"Thankfully he didn't seem to find his capture too alarming and hadn't released his spray in defence - otherwise it would have been a much smellier rescue mission."
From BBC ● Oct. 22, 2021
But the human cooling mechanism could be much worse, Everts says — less effective and even smellier.
From New York Times ● Jul. 21, 2021
It’s just a bad setup and the more people look into it, the smellier it looks.
From Slate ● Nov. 12, 2019
Within fifteen minutes, so many people had shown up that the room got hotter and more humid and even smellier.
From "The Science of Breakable Things" by Tae Keller
It’s like saying that the smelliest dog in town got four baths this week.
From Barron's ● Apr. 10, 2026
Before he started a company 15 years ago selling the world’s smelliest fruit, Eric Chan had a well-paying job writing code for satellites and robots.
From New York Times ● Jun. 16, 2024
“Odorless” on the label means it has been refined even more to strip it of some of the smelliest — and most toxic — ingredients.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 17, 2023
Or is it because chopping garlic is one of the most menial, least pleasurable, smelliest of tasks, and a refusal to do so indicates a resistance to work for our food?
From Salon ● Jan. 10, 2022
Korean food is the tastiest but makes the smelliest poops.
From "Everything Sad Is Untrue" by Daniel Nayeri
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.
