How to use smelly in a sentence

32 example sentences · adjective, noun

Smelly means having a bad smell. Example: “She was hesitant to remove her shoes, as her socks were rather smelly.”

Examples of smelly by meaning

adjectiveHaving a bad smell.

She was hesitant to remove her shoes, as her socks were rather smelly.

adjectiveHaving a quality that arouses suspicion.

The detective read the documents and thought, "Something sure is smelly about this case."

adjectiveHaving signs that suggest a design problem; having a code smell.

That smelly code needs to be refactored.

nounA smelly person.

Both of them had been called “little smellies,” because Hillie insisted their breath reeked of garlic and fish.[2012, Joe O’Neill, Wrath of the Caid (The Red Hand Adventures; II), [Hood River, Ore.]: Black Ship Publishing, →ISBN, page 92
I have two little smellies to think of too.2014, Shweta Taneja, Cult of Chaos: An Anantya Tantrist Mystery, Noida, Uttar Pradesh: HarperCollins Publishers India, →ISBN, page 212

More sentences with smelly

When my wet chihuahua shook himself, I was spattered with smelly water.From the entry spatter
Does your Monstership desire more smelly socks?From the entry monstership
Silent farts are often the smelliest.From the entry fart
Dry pailing is much less smelly than wet pailing (soaking them in water or a disinfectant solution).2023 October 30, “Everything You Need to Know About Dry Pailing Reusable Nappies”, in Bambino Mio. From the entry dry pailing
My girlfriends love being bred into, containing all of my smelly goonjuice.2023 November 17, @EloCrinkle, Twitter. From the entry pampie
I eventually got to a smelly bus shelter and perched cautiously on the bench inside.2019, Candice Carty-Williams, Queenie, Trapeze, page 44. From the entry bus shelter
A typical sign of cloacitis is smelly slime oozing from the vent and sticking to the feathers.2016, Gail Damerow, The Chicken Health Handbook. From the entry cloacitis
Continuing oppressive summer heat made football practices and learning in smelly non-air-conditioned classrooms uncomforatable.2015, Ruth V. Burgess, J. David Burgess, Longing for Home. From the entry non-air-conditioned
With a gate-toothed smile, she dug her fat fingers into the pot of smelly stuff.2015, Juliet Waldron, The Master Passion: Book 1: Love and Liberty, page 147. From the entry gate-toothed
First, though, he showed up at school in a horse-drawn cart and endured a smelly egg facial.2005, Sennett, Frank, 101 stunts for principals to inspire student achievement, page 66. From the entry eggstatic
Police helicopters blared loudspeaker warnings about the smelly man.2014, Nick Arnold, Horrible Science: Body Owner's Handbook, page 159. From the entry niff
Paul and Maureen, you gather some nice smelly pine shatters from off 'n the floor of the woods.2012, Marguerite Henry, Sea Star: Orphan of Chincoteague, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, page 95. From the entry shatter
I'm not interested in any of these gross, ugly losers!” “What about this gross, ugly, smelly loser?” “Fry!2010 July 8, Michael Rowe, “Proposition Infinity” (12:16 from the start), in Futurama, season 6, episode 4, spoken by Philip J. Fry (Billy…. From the entry robosexual
“What’s all this wonderful smelly stuff?” And she threw herself down on its redolent pillowiness, and the others followed her example.1958, Edward Eager, “All the Time in the World”, in The Time Garden, San Diego, Calif.: Harcourt, Inc., published 1999, →ISBN, page 21. From the entry pillowiness
Surely a cut cloth would give a much better representation of a portcullis than would a row of smelly little lamps?1947 April, H.M.C., “Correspondence—More about Battens”, in Tabs, volume 5, number 1, […] The Strand Electric and Engineering Co. Ltd.…. From the entry portscullis
Nunheim's home was on the fourth floor of a dark, damp, and smelly building made noisy by the Sixth Avenue elevated.1934, Dashiell Hammett, chapter 16, in The Thin Man, New York: Knopf. From the entry elevated
I could not understand his intense feeling for his smelly hounds, with their horrible yelping and slobbing mouths.1924, Shane Leslie, Masquerades: Studies in the Morbid, page 32. From the entry slob
But seeing the mountain of smelly plastic mount up in my bin, I was delighted when Jen suggested a nappy library near to me.2021, Jen Gale, The Sustainable(ish) Guide to Green Parenting: Guilt-free Eco-ideas for Raising Your Kids, Bloomsbury Publishing, →ISBN…. From the entry nappy library
Not smelly enough for a change!2019 February 3, @MarsPastMidnite, Twitter, archived from the original on 18 Jan 2026. From the entry pamper packing
I took up wrestling, but I didn’t like having to stay for ten minutes in somebody’s crotch with the same smelly sweatshirts and sweat trousers.2017, Jim Korkis, “Hobbies”, in Call Me Walt: Everything You Never Knew About Walt Disney, Theme Park Press, →ISBN, page 93. From the entry sweat trousers
A walker was stunned after spotting a rare smelly fungus – which is bright pink with “tentacles” and is known as “Octopus Stinkhorn”.2014 December 27, “Moor walker finds a ‘Octopus Stinkhorn’”, in Western Daily Press, Bristol, page 6. From the entry octopus stinkhorn
So she let herself be crammed into a corner of the smelliest pub in town, slowly kippering in a haze of other people's cigarette smoke.2012, Zoe Barnes, Just Married. From the entry kipper
You pull the lever on that crapper and a few hundred pounds of smelly stuff will fly up your nose in a heart beat.2003, Crazy Ivan: Based on a True Story of Submarine Espionage, →ISBN, page 38. From the entry sanitaries
Hanis, 27, made a statement on her socmed account which implied that Indian music maestro AR Rahman's concert at the National Stadium in Bukit Jalil "must be smelly".2023 February 9, Jugjet Singh, “Hanis to lose her perks for racial slur”, in The Straits Times, →OCLC, archived from the original on 12…. From the entry socmed
(for you city folks, bull butter is that black, smelly substance found in piles all over cow pastures) but in your case, the bull butter ain't on the outside.2014, Ken English, More COMMON Sense, page 86. From the entry bull butter
Who needed Tyler's ridonkulous scooter and his smelly old T-shirts from Hot Topic and that weird habit he had of scratching his ear 'til it bled?2009, Christian Carvajal, Lightfall, page 21. From the entry ridonkulous
Difficulty with bottom wiping – teenagers often go through a ‘dirty’ stage and are more sweaty and smelly but they usually do not to have a ‘toilety’ smell.2003, Amanda Kirby, Sharon Drew, Guide to Dyspraxia and Developmental Coordination Disorders, London: David Fulton Publishers, →ISBN, page…. From the entry toilety

Meaning of smelly

adjective Having a bad smell.
adjective Having a quality that arouses suspicion.
adjective Having signs that suggest a design problem; having a code smell.

Full definition of smelly

Questions about smelly in a sentence

How do you use smelly in a sentence?: Smelly is used as an adjective and noun. For example: “She was hesitant to remove her shoes, as her socks were rather smelly.”
What is a short sentence with smelly?: “Not smelly enough for a change!”
What does smelly mean?: Smelly means having a bad smell.

Adapted from Wiktionary: smelly (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this page: “How to use smelly in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/smelly. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.