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

There’s some truth to this, but the overarching emphasis on miasma theory fundamentally ignores how the immune system works.

From Salon ● Nov. 29, 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

This miasma of mockery and admiration is relevant again to the actor because of the unexpected viral notoriety of his character in “Dream Scenario.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 2, 2024

“Doc says it’s something in the air that spreads ague—something off bad water and garbage. A miasma, he called it.”

From "Kindred" by Octavia Butler

So when an epidemic gets underway, we don’t waste time on sacrifices to propitiate angry gods or fretting about deadly miasmas seeping in with the night air.

From Washington Post ● Jan. 28, 2020

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

From The Guardian ● Sep. 8, 2018

Soon germs became even more frightening than miasmas.

From Salon ● May 21, 2012

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

It was also to be feared that during the heat miasmas would arise, which might produce fevers.

From The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne

The air, purer and less charged with miasmata and heterogeneous emanations, becomes at the same time drier.

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

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

This decomposes most rapidly upon the approach of hot weather, and the action of the dews, when they begin to fall upon it, causes the miasmata to rise in dense and poisonous mists.

From Four Years in Rebel Capitals An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death by T. C. DeLeon

The miasmata appear to ascend until they reach the level of the town above, where the atmosphere being less dense, and perhaps precisely of their own specific gravity, they float, and commingle with it.

From A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America by S. A. (Simon Ansley) Ferrall

The lake, the waters of which appear yellow by transmitted light, is dry in the season of great heat, and the Indians themselves are unable to resist the miasmata rising from the mud.

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