Stench

How to spell stench

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce stench

What does stench mean?

1. nounA strong and very unpleasant smell.

Stench in a sentence

• The stench from the blocked drain filled the whole kitchen.

• A thick stench of rotting rubbish hung over the alley.

Where does stench come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word comes from the Old English noun stenc, which simply meant a smell or odour and was not always a bad one; early usage could describe a pleasant scent just as easily as a foul one. It traces back to Proto-Germanic roots that also produced stincan, the ancestor of the modern verb 'to stink', so stench and stink are close cousins built on the same family. Over the centuries the meaning narrowed and darkened, so that by the late medieval period a stench was understood specifically as a strong and offensive smell. The shift from neutral odour to disgusting reek mirrors the way the related word 'stink' also lost any neutral sense. The spelling preserves the old Germanic 'stenc' cluster, with the final sound now written 'ch', which is why it ends in 'nch' rather than the 'nk' of its relative stink.

How the word is built

• sten- (from Old English stenc: smell, odour)
• -ch (consonant cluster)