stink

/stɪŋk/

stink verb: to have a strong bad smell.

Verb

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

(intransitive) To have a strong bad smell.

Synonyms:

pong, reek
(informal, intransitive, stative) To be greatly inferior; to perform badly.
- That movie stinks. I didn't even stay for the end.
- They gave me Out of Africa, by Isak Dinesen. I thought it was going to stink, but it didn't. It was a very good book.1951 July 16, J[erome] D[avid] Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown and Company, →OCLC, page 24
Synonyms:

suck, blow
(intransitive) To give an impression of dishonesty, untruth, or sin.
- Something stinks about the politician's excuses.
- The parish stank of idolatry, abominable rites were practiced in secret, and in all the bounds there was no one had a more evil name for the black traffic than one Alison Sempill, who bode at the Skerburnfoot.1902, John Buchan, The Outgoing of the Tide
Synonyms:

be fishy
(transitive) To cause to stink; to affect by a stink.

Noun

stink (countable and uncountable, plural stinks)

A strong bad smell.
- “I’m thankful for this beautiful morning!” He points toward the sky. “See that sunrise? Smell that air—” / “That’s stink from the rendering plant.”2011, Jonathan Friesen, chapter 6, in The Last Martin, Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zonderkidz, →ISBN, page 65
Synonyms:

fetor, odour, odor, pong, reek, smell, stench
(informal) A complaint or objection.
- If you don't make a stink about the problem, nothing will be done.
- She's made a big stink about me calling her "Miss", not "Ms".

Adjective

stink (comparative more stink, superlative most stink)

(New Zealand, slang) Bad; inferior; worthless.
- The concert was stink. / That was a stink concert.
(Caribbean, Guyana, Jamaica) Bad-smelling, stinky.
- Everyone is up in arms but it smells stink because it smells of racism…2013, Stabroek News, 19 February 2013, cited by Deborah Jan Osman Backer in a speech delivered in the National Assembly during the Budget Debate, 2013
- Spending hours in a “stink" morgue, being called “Taliban”, thinking of getting shot in the head by officers—memories of Venezuela that have left Hamza Mohammed, imam of the Montrose mosque, still trembling today.2014 May 26, Taureef Mohammed, “Imam recounts 55-day Venezuelan horror”, in Trinidad and Tobago Guardian

stink meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Bengali

stink in Hindi

have a strong bad smell: गंधाना gandhānā

stink in Tamil

have a strong bad smell: நாறு nāṟu

stink in Urdu

stink: گند gãnd
stink, stench; bad-smell, bad-odor: بد بو bad-bū
stink, stench: بو bū

stink in Bengali

দুর্গন্ধ ছড়ানো

More languagesFewer languages

stink in Telugu: దుర్గంధము durgandhamu, కంపు kampu
stink in Malayalam: നാറുക nāṟuka, ദുർഗന്ധം വമിക്കുക duṟgandhaṁ vamikkuka, ദുർഗന്ധം duṟgandhaṁ, നാറ്റം nāṟṟaṁ
stink in Kannada: ದುರ್ವಾಸನೆ ಬರು, ಗಬ್ಬುನಾತ ಬೀರು, ದುರ್ಗಂಧ ಹೊಡೆ, ನಾರು
stink in Punjabi: ਦੁਰਗੰਧ durgandh
stink in Gujarati: વાસ મારવી vās mārvī
stink in Sanskrit: पूयति pūyati
stink in Pashto: سا sā
stink in Arabic: نَتُنَ natuna, نَتِنَ natina
stink in Malay: busuk
stink in Thai: เหม็น měn
stink in Vietnamese: bốc mùi thối, bay mùi thối, thối
stink in Myanmar: နံ nam

Examples of stink in a sentence

If nothing happens when you ask nicely, make a stink until something gets done.
If nothing happens when you ask nicely, raise a stink until something gets done.
I have to find a nonseasonal job: being out of work after three months just stinks.

All 40 example sentences with stink

Synonyms of stink

All synonyms of stink

Forms of stink

Verb
third-person singular present	stinks
present participle	stinking
past	stank
past	stunk
past participle	stunk
Noun
plural	stinks
Adjective
comparative	more stink
superlative	most stink

Past tense of stink: stank or stunk

Origin of stink

From Middle English stinken, 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 Russian рази́ть (razítʹ).

Words formed from stink

Words that rhyme with stink

35 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about stink

What does stink mean?: Stink means to have a strong bad smell.
What is stink in Hindi?: Stink in Hindi is गंधाना (gandhānā). See Stink meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is stink?: Stink can be a verb, a noun or an adjective.
How do you pronounce stink?: Stink is pronounced /stɪŋk/.
What is the past tense of stink?: The past tense of stink is stank.

Words near stink in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: stink (page history and authors); بد بو (Urdu) (page history and authors); stink (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); stink (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ਦੁਰਗੰਧ (Punjabi) (page history and authors); વાસ મારવી (Gujarati) (page history and authors); سا (Pashto) (page history and authors). 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: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-stink.ogg.

Cite this entry: “stink.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/stink. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.