stank to high heaven

Verb

stink to high heaven (third-person singular simple present stinks to high heaven, present participle stinking to high heaven, simple past stank to high heaven or stunk to high heaven, past participle stunk to high heaven)

1. (derogatory, slang) To have a very strong and unpleasant smell.
   • He could stand snakes, but alligators he disliked. It was the way they dragged their victims underneath the water and buried them, waiting until the corpse became rotten. That was the way they liked their meat—stinking to high heaven. The thought of such a death filled him with dread.1975, Donald Goines, chapter I, in Swamp Man, Los Angeles, Calif.: Holloway House Publishing Company, published 2005, →ISBN, page 12

   Synonyms:

   reek, funk, honk, hum, niff, pong, smell, stink, whiff

2. (derogatory, figuratively, slang) Of a person or situation: to be highly ethically dubious; also, of a person: to be very incompetent.
   • Was it not that I was nauseated by our richest men? By the convicts of riches, who pick up their advantage out of any rubbish, with cold eyes, lewd thoughts; by this rabble that stinks to high heaven; by this gilded, false mob whose fathers have been pickpockets or carrion birds or ragpickers— [...]1954, Friedrich Nietzsche, “Thus Spoke Zarathustra: Fourth and Last Part [The Voluntary Beggar]”, in Walter Kaufmann, transl., The Portable Nietzsche: […] (The Viking Portable Library; 64), New York...