smell

1. 1.

   inhale the odor of; perceive by the olfactory sense

   Broaderperceive

   Narrowersniffscentsnuffget a noseful
2. 2.

   emit an odor

   “The soup smells good”

   Broadercause to be perceived
3. 3.

   smell bad

   “He rarely washes, and he smells”

   Narrowerreeksalute
4. 4.

   have an element suggestive (of something)

   “his speeches smacked of racism”

   “this passage smells of plagiarism”

   Synonymssmackreek

   Broadersuggest
5. 5.

   become aware of not through the senses but instinctively

   “I sense his hostility”

   “I smell trouble”

   “smell out corruption”

   Synonymssmell outsense

   Broaderperceive

Other forms of smell

plural

smells·

past tense or participle

smelt

present participle

smelling·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about smell

What does smell mean?

smell means "the sensation that results when olfactory receptors in the nose are stimulated by particular chemicals in gaseous form". That is the primary sense; the word has 10 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in smell?

smell has 1 syllable: smell. In IPA it is /ˈsmɛl/.

What is another word for smell?

Close synonyms include odor, odour, olfactory sensation, olfactory perception, olfactory property. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is smell a common word?

smell is banded "Core" — among the few thousand words that carry most english. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.