smelly
Americanadjective
adjective
Other Word Forms
- smelliness noun
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.
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
Trees have less dramatic ways to screw up your day: Their roots can infiltrate cracks in septic or sewage pipes, blocking the system and wreaking expensive, smelly havoc.
From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 4, 2026
One used the codeword "smelly bananas" to signal things were getting too much.
From BBC • Dec. 21, 2025
The ones I could actually get were dark, smelly or unsafe.
From Los Angeles Times • Nov. 14, 2025
That was the one with all the moving parts: Jordie, Pouncey, the girls, not to mention an eighty-pound bag of smelly fertilizer that wasn’t exactly easy to cart around town.
From "Linked" by Gordon Korman
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.
