stinky
Americanadjective
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having a foul smell
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informal unpleasant or disgusting
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informal of poor quality; contemptible
Etymology
Origin of stinky
Explanation
Stinky things smell bad. If your gym uniform is particularly stinky after a game of volleyball, you should probably wash it. You might describe the gorgonzola cheese your sister loves as stinky. She, on the other hand, may object to your favorite perfume, describing it as stinky. Besides bad odors, the informal adjective stinky can also describe generally bad or rotten things: "You did a stinky job of cleaning the kitchen after you baked all that bread. There's flour everywhere!"
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:
It’s sweaty, stinky time again at the Huntington Library, Art Gallery, and Botanic Gardens, where the season’s first rare corpse flower bloom is expected by July 23.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 14, 2026
Alice spends her days cleaning Lady Jemima’s stinky shoes, sponging her underwear and greasing her long blonde hair.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 26, 2026
That is the stinky cherry on top of this case, because the Justice Department still won, right?
From Slate ● Oct. 31, 2025
"I know how much he loves me, that he's willing to go through a rotten, stinky compost pile," she told CTV with a laugh.
From BBC ● Aug. 25, 2025
We’ve spent four years jamming out in this stinky, dusty garage.
From "Legendary Frybread Drive-In" by Cynthia Leitich Smith
Don't be scared of the stinky cheese; in fact, the stinkier, the better, I say!
From Salon ● Jan. 22, 2023
“But with so much more food waste, our trash tends to be stinkier, smellier wet trash.”
From Washington Post ● Oct. 20, 2021
Most of the time, the stinkier the cheese, the stronger its flavor.
From Washington Post ● Sep. 8, 2021
On the contrary, it just makes it even stinkier, because it has aspirations to be something bigger and better than it truly is and fails miserably to reach those heights.
From The Guardian ● Sep. 27, 2014
“I’ll tell you because you’re my best friend: It’s mostly blended hot dog wiener and some really stinky cheese. The stinkier, the better.”
From "Hope Springs" by Jaime Berry
Little is known about how the parasitic Rafflesia—a genus that produces the world’s largest and stinkiest flower—infects its host plants.
From Scientific American ● Mar. 25, 2022
He was hired to be part of the agency’s new odor inspection team, touring Minnesota’s stinkiest places.
From New York Times ● Jan. 13, 2022
Having received the world’s stinkiest lotion from a student a few years back, I can confirm that that’s a good idea.
From Slate ● Apr. 23, 2021
It’s a joke, but not really: Somewhere between the exhibit on the world’s stinkiest cheese and the free samples of fermented shark meat, someone’s stomach may turn.
From Washington Post ● Oct. 9, 2018
How was I supposed to know Stilton is England’s stinkiest cheese?
From "A Place at the Table" by Saadia Faruqi and Laura Shovan
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.
