Basically, to
smell foul. Not just as simple as having an
unpleasant odour, but a nostril-eating, brain-rotting,
vomit-inducing
stench of
mythological proportions.
Foul-smelling things have been known to include:
- certain 'advanced' flavours of cheese (see Limburger).
- socks left for weeks and weeks in the gym bag before you finally
remember to unpack and was them. Sometimes it's easier just to throw
away the bag and its pungent contents.
- the guy next to you in the crammed subway car.
- a peculiar swedish delicatesse called 'surströmming', which is
basically fermented fish. I am told that the norwegians and
eskimos have something similar.
- the fruits of the first morning crap you take during a really
bad hangover.
As we can see, this phenomenom is often tightly coupled with bodily
excretions or the process of
fermentation, or (for best
results) a combination of the two.