miasma

As I emerged from my children’s earliest years—a miasma of Duplo blocks, nursing pads and sleepless nights—I felt utterly depleted, not just in a physical sense but in a creative one.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 14, 2026

Maddow then segued into a more comprehensive discussion about the rule of law, which she argued was not an abstract "miasma" but rather, is "specific stuff."

From Salon ● May 7, 2024

Another took footage inside, a miasma of smoke quickly obscuring the camera lens as passengers shouted and cabin crew tried to direct their next moves.

From BBC ● Jan. 2, 2024

In characteristic Haynes fashion, though, nothing is as it first seems in this shimmering Gothic, including the light that becomes more like a queasy, suffocating miasma.

From New York Times ● Nov. 30, 2023

The smell in the room was foul, a miasma of mold and piss and nightsoil, of smoke and sickness.

From "A Dance with Dragons" by George R. R. Martin

Modern warfare creates miasmas of emotion, information, misinformation, deception and secrecy.

From The Guardian ● Sep. 8, 2018

It’s a madman’s trapezoid, a magic carpet ride of dazed miasmas and subtle brumes.

From Washington Post ● Jan. 13, 2016

It was not difficult, then, to accept the idea that foul-smelling toilets, drains, and the huge piles of horse manure that lined city streets harbored dangerous bacteria instead of miasmas.

From Salon ● May 21, 2012

Indeed, for a while the two theories coexisted quite happily, for it was initially thought that bacteria flourished only in decaying and putrefying substances — the very things that produced miasmas.

From Salon ● May 21, 2012

Neither air nor sunshine ever penetrated into these infamous alleys, from which escaped, at all seasons of the year, nauseating odors, and too often, also, pestilential miasmas.

From Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 by William Walton

Ancient philosophers seem to have believed, that the contagious miasmata in their warm climates affected horses and dogs previous to mankind.

From Zoonomia, Vol. II Or, the Laws of Organic Life by Erasmus Darwin

It thus aids in maintaining the balance of life, and cleanses the swamps of miasmata, thus purifying the air we breathe.

From Our Common Insects A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, Gardens and Houses by A. S. (Alpheus Spring) Packard

Soon he returned with an arm load—the poison of spiders, the venom of serpents, the miasmata of swamps, the juice of the deadly nightshade.

From Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year by E. C. (Ernest Clark) Hartwell

At this point, the atmosphere is loaded with pestilential miasmata.

From Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa by Mungo Park

Much of that region is heavily timbered, and, upon cutting it away in spots, and letting in the rays of the sun upon vegetable matter undergoing decomposition, miasmata are generated.

From A New Guide for Emigrants to the West by John Mason Peck