smelly
/ˈsmɛli/
smelly adjective: having a bad smell.
Adjective
smelly (comparative smellier, superlative smelliest)
- Having a bad smell.
- She was hesitant to remove her shoes, as her socks were rather smelly.
- Synonyms:
- fetid
- Having a quality that arouses suspicion.
- The detective read the documents and thought, "Something sure is smelly about this case."
- Synonyms:
- dodgy, doubtful, dubious, suspect, suspicious
- Having signs that suggest a design problem; having a code smell.
- That smelly code needs to be refactored.
Noun (1)
smelly (plural smellies)
- A smelly person.
- And I can get home myself, thank you. Little smelly.1965, Richard Dowling, chapter 31, in All the Beautiful People, London: Arthur Barker Limited […], page 228
- Or if you know any piglets with water pistols, maybe you could throw them a bottle of gargle and say, ‘Hoy you smellies, I bet you can’t squirt the little dangly thing up the dark end of my gob with this’.2000, Ian Whybrow, Little Wolf’s Postbag, London: Collins, →ISBN, page 45
Noun (2)
smelly (plural smellies)
- a Short Magazine Lee Enfield rifle or one of its derivatives.
smelly meaning in Hindi, Marathi, Bengali and Malayalam
smelly in Hindi
- बदबूदार
smelly in Marathi
- दुर्गंधीयुक्त
smelly in Bengali
- দুর্গন্ধযুক্ত
smelly in Malayalam
- stinking, foul-smelling, reeking
- മണക്കുന്ന, ചൂരടിക്കുന്ന, മണമുള്ള, ദുർഗ്ഗന്ധമുള്ള, ഘ്രാണ, നാറുന്ന
More languagesFewer languages
- smelly in Odia
- ଦୁର୍ଗନ୍ଧଯୁକ୍ତ
- smelly in Nepali
- गनाउने ganāune
- smelly in Tagalog
- mabaho
- smelly in Arabic
- مُنْتِن muntin
- smelly in Malay
- busuk
- smelly in Thai
- เหม็น měn
- smelly in Vietnamese
- thối, thúi, hôi, khắm
Examples of smelly in a sentence
- When my wet chihuahua shook himself, I was spattered with smelly water.
- Does your Monstership desire more smelly socks?
- Silent farts are often the smelliest.
Synonyms of smelly
1 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Antonyms
Forms of smelly
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| comparative | smellier |
| superlative | smelliest |
| Noun | |
| plural | smellies |
Origin of smelly
From smell + -y.
A comical pronunciation of the initials SMLE.
Words formed from smelly
Phrases with smelly
Words that rhyme with smelly
15 more rhymesFewer rhymes
Questions about smelly
- What does smelly mean?
- Smelly means having a bad smell.
- What is smelly in Hindi?
- Smelly in Hindi is बदबूदार. See Smelly meaning in Hindi.
- What part of speech is smelly?
- Smelly can be an adjective or a noun.
- How do you pronounce smelly?
- Smelly is pronounced /ˈsmɛli/.
Words near smelly in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: smelly (page history and authors); smelly (Hindi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); smelly (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); smelly (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); smelly (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); smelly (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-smelly.ogg.
Cite this entry: “smelly.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/smelly. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.