Meaning

noun a distinctive odor that is offensively unpleasant

verb be extremely bad in quality or in one's performance

verb smell badly and offensively

originFrom 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,…

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0