reek
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
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No one has ever written an alternate history that didn’t reek of staginess, but Mr. Boyne’s cast comes coated with greasepaint.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 11, 2026
Disproportionate death sentences may be convincing to those who make clemency decisions, and they reek of unfairness.
From Slate ● Mar. 6, 2026
If that doesn’t reek of a corporate attempt to get people hooked, I don’t know what does.
From Salon ● Oct. 11, 2025
So the two embarked on a survey in the university hostels asking a truly human question: if our sneakers reek, doesn't that ruin the entire experience of using a shoe rack?
From BBC ● Sep. 27, 2025
But all that happened was that our bathroom began to reek.
From "Courage to Soar" by Simone Biles
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This story reeks of sub-Le Carré spycraft gone wrong and the use of the courts to hush it up.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 7, 2026
The shelter in the town hall car park has excrement smeared on the floor and reeks of urine.
From Barron's ● Mar. 14, 2026
By leaving the couple of hours between posts “to me, reeks of some sort of impropriety,” Adami said.
From MarketWatch ● Jan. 8, 2026
It reeks of Silicon Valley’s Patagonia vests and Kim Kardashian’s all-white kitchen islands.
From Salon ● Aug. 23, 2025
The place already reeks like sunscreen and burning charcoal, even though it’s barely nine o’clock.
From "Shouting at the Rain" by Lynda Mullaly Hunt
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He looked up to find the culprit: tree-shaped air fresheners that reeked of cheap cologne.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 11, 2026
"The house reeked when we first got here, it was genuinely atrocious for months," Razan says.
From BBC ● Jun. 24, 2026
It reeked of moisture, and she and her husband worried about raising young kids amid mold.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 5, 2024
It also reeked of “desperation,” per former federal prosecutor Harry Litman.
From Salon ● May 29, 2024
The shell house reeked sourly of sweat and damp socks and mildew, as it did every afternoon now that the rainy season had begun.
From "The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics" by Daniel James Brown
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In a move reeking of desperation, Ramaswamy’s campaign ran a spot featuring Acton’s elderly mother, Donna Arthur, calling her daughter a “liar” and suggesting she suffers from severe mental illness.
From Salon ● Oct. 23, 2026
Snake is a wonderfully pulpy, instantly iconic creation, an outcast adventurer reeking of sweat and post-Vietnam cynicism.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 29, 2025
Fans have been speaking to BBC Sport to vent their frustration at the situation, with one saying: "Spurs now enter the final few weeks of the transfer window reeking of desperation."
From BBC ● Aug. 21, 2025
By Day 7, even with the backyard reeking like an industrial accident at a toothpaste factory, the tiny trio of terrorists was back in full force.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 26, 2024
He was in the dripping, reeking bowels of the earth.
From "Wolf Brother" by Michelle Paver
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Vocabulary lists containing reek
The Nose Knows: Olfactory Vocabulary
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Something Smells: From "Malodorous" to "Mephitic" to "It Reeks!"
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Smell Words
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