Other forms: stinking, stinks, stank, stunk
To stink is to give off a very bad smell. The bin stinks, it stinks in here, stinking of smoke.
It is the strongest of the family: something can smell, then reek, then stink. The past tense is stank and the participle stunk. Figuratively it means to be obviously bad or dishonest: the whole thing stinks. To kick up a stink means to complain loudly and publicly. Note stinking as an intensifier in stinking rich, and that stinker means both a bad thing and, affectionately, a badly behaved child.
1verbstinkTo give off a very bad smell.
“The whole kitchen stinks of burnt onions.”
2verbobviouslyTo be obviously bad or dishonest.
“The timing of it stinks and everybody has noticed.”
3nounloudA very bad smell, or a loud public complaint.
“There was a stink in the corridor for about a week.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
stink is a bad smell.
Old English stincan originally meant simply to smell, good or bad — the same verb covered a rose and a drain. English narrowed it to the bad half, leaving smell to do the neutral work.
Proto-Indo-European
*stengʷ-
Proto-Germanic
*stinkwaną
Old English
stincan
Middle English
stynken
English, today
stink
Built from
From Middle English stynken, from Old English stincan, from Proto-Germanic stinkwaną, from Proto-Indo-European stengʷ-, stegʷ- (“to push, thrust, strike”). Cognate with West Frisian stjonke (“to stink”), Dutch stinken (“to stink”), German stinken (“to stink”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål and Norwegian Nynorsk stinke (“to stink”), Swedish stinka (“to stink”), Icelandic stökkva (“to spring, leap, jump”). Compare typologically рази́ть.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA