fetid
/ˈfɛtɪd
/ /ˈfiːtɪd/(also foetid)
adjective
Smelling extremely unpleasant: the fetid water of the marsh...
- In the wards, children are crowded two and three in a bed in airless rooms, foetid with the smell of kerosene heaters.
- By the early hours of Sunday morning the fire was under control but days later the streets around the city's southside were blocked off and the air was fetid with the smell of damp smoke.
- And pot smoke lends a piquant tinge to the smell of fetid sweat.
Synonyms
stinking, smelly, foul-smelling, evil-smelling, malodorous, stinking to high heaven, reeking, pungent, acrid, high, rank, foul, unpleasant, nasty, noxious;
West Indian fresh
informal stinky, reeky
British informal niffing, niffy, pongy, whiffy, humming
North American informal funky
literary noisome, mephitic
rare miasmic, miasmal, olid
Derivatives
fetidly
/ /ˈfiːtɪdli / adverb ...- Putrid smoke laced the sky, blending with the dark, low-hanging storm clouds that did not promise rain, and the eerily angelic white of mist rising from the fetidly warm earth.
- But without them I was forced to live in a world of initially swirling, but then foetidly clumping leaves.
fetidness
/ /ˈfiːtɪdnəs / noun ...- The scent is quite strong and usually musky with undertones of foetidness.
- There was an air of fetidness, an oddly familiar fetidness.
Origin
Late Middle English: from Latin fetidus (often erroneously spelled foetidus), from fetere 'to stink'. Compare with fetor.
Rhymes
- double-entry
- double exposure
- double-faced
- double fault
- double feature
- double figures
- double first
- double flat
- double-fronted
- double fugue
- double-glaze
- double glazing
- Double Gloucester
- double-handed
- double harness
- double-headed
- double-header
- double helix
- double-hung
- double indemnity
- double jeopardy
- double-jointed
- double-jointedness
- double-knit
- double knitting