mephitic

comparative more mephitic · superlative most mephitic

1. Foul-smelling or noxious, particularly of a gas or atmosphere.

   "I could have borne the sight of his crutch," said she, "but the crutch and the nephew together really oppress me like a mephitic vapour."

   1842, [anonymous collaborator of Letitia Elizabeth Landon], chapter LXI, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. […], volume III, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, pages 151–152

   3 more examples

   It is impossible to convey, in words, any idea of the hideous phantasmagoria of shifting limbs and faces which moved through the evil-smelling twilight of this terrible prison-house. Callot might have drawn it, Dante might have suggested it, but a minute attempt to describe its horrors would but disgust. There are depths in humanity which one cannot explore, as there are mephitic caverns into which one dare not penetrate.

   1874, Marcus Clarke, chapter V, in For the Term of His Natural Life

   From this crawling flapping mass of obscene reptilian life came the shocking clamor which filled the air and the mephitic, horrible, musty odor which turned us sick.

   1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC

   More than that, perhaps the worst thing, was a sort of mephitic fog, moistureless and invisible, that came and went like an exhalation of the arid earth itself.

   1996, Janette Turner Hospital, Oyster, paperback edition, Virago Press, page 3