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

Above all, we experience a pervasive miasma of helplessness as we are forced to watch this intolerable train wreck.

From Salon ● Sep. 20, 2025

In such a milieu, Hine’s troubling 1908 photographs would easily disappear, perhaps seizing a moment but soon evaporating into the visual miasma that floods the zone daily.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 5, 2025

They were interning at a local dance studio, teaching yoga to kids and unsteadily emerging from a miasma of childhood depression.

From New York Times ● Mar. 20, 2024

The beaver ponds are never more than chest deep, but the water is cold, and as we slosh forward, our feet chum the muck on the bottom into a foul-smelling miasma of decomposing slime.

From "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer

Unlike today, when scientists know that disease is spread by microorganisms, Victorian Englishmen thought it was spread by "miasmas," or "bad air."

From Salon ● Jul. 25, 2023

It’s also possible the miasmas of their lives and interests will swirl off in other directions for any number of other reasons independent of how they feel about each other.

From Washington Post ● Aug. 27, 2021

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

From The Guardian ● Sep. 8, 2018

If one bought into the dangers of miasmas, it wasn’t much of a leap to buy into the dangers of one’s own internal sewage.

From Salon ● Apr. 7, 2013

The fatigues and miasmas of the Corinth campaign planted in his magnificent frame the seeds of death.

From Famous Americans of Recent Times by James Parton

He complains of much sickness among his men round Mantua, owing to the heat and miasmata from the marshes, but so far no deaths.

From Napoleon's Letters to Josephine by Henry Foljambe Hall

Swampy districts in Holland have been made habitable by an extensive culture of the Sunflower, the malarial miasmata being absorbed and nullified, whilst pure oxygen is emitted abundantly.

From Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure by William Thomas Fernie

The nearer they ascended to the clouds of heaven, the freer they were from the miasmata and insects of the swamp.

From The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia by A. H. (Archibald Henry) Sayce

The frequency of gnats and mosquitos characterises unhealthy climates only so far as the development and multiplication of these insects depend on the same causes that give rise to miasmata.

From Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America, During the Year 1799-1804 — Volume 2 by Alexander von Humboldt

The atmosphere of such a town would be like that of the country, insusceptible of the miasmata which produce yellow fever.

From Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 4 by Thomas Jefferson Randolph