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Webster 1828 Edition


Mephitic

MEPHIT'IC

,
Adj.
[L. mephitis, an ill smell.] Offensive to the smell; foul; poisonous; noxious; pestilential; destructive to life.
Mephitic acid is carbonic acid.

Definition 2024


mephitic

mephitic

English

Adjective

mephitic (comparative more mephitic, superlative most mephitic)

  1. foul-smelling or noxious, particularly of a gas or atmosphere.
    • 1874, Marcus Clarke, “V”, in For the Term of His Natural Life:
      It is impossible to convey, in words, any idea of the hideous phantasmagoria of shifting limbs and faces which moved through the evil-smelling twilight of this terrible prison-house. Callot might have drawn it, Dante might have suggested it, but a minute attempt to describe its horrors would but disgust. There are depths in humanity which one cannot explore, as there are mephitic caverns into which one dare not penetrate.
    • 1996, Janette Turner Hospital, Oyster, paperback edition, Virago Press, page 3:
      More than that, perhaps the worst thing, was a sort of mephitic fog, moistureless and invisible, that came and went like an exhalation of the arid earth itself.

Derived terms