NOUN
- a poisonous or foul smelling gas emitted from the earth
- a distinctive odor that is offensively unpleasant
How To Use mephitis In A Sentence
- There are 11 species of skunks, which are divided into four genera: Mephitis (hooded and striped skunks, two species), Spilogale (spotted skunks, two species), Mydaus (stink badgers, two species), and Conepatus (hog-nosed skunks, five species). Ferret frenzy « knitnut.net
- The gunpowder without the mephitis being fired, the combustion was soon communicated to the other extremity of the train, and to the phosphorus, which took fire with decrepitation, burnt rapidly, with a bright flame, slightly coloured with veilow and green, and left on the wood a black mark, as of charcoal. A General collection of the best and most interesting voyages and travels in all parts of the world [microform] : many of which are now first translated into English : digested on a new plan
- Few, on either side of the political spectrum, come well out of the affair and over it all hangs the olid mephitis of abject appeasement. The Home Secretary Is Also Stupid
- Black's student Daniel Rutherford called this gas mephitic air instead: mephitis is a noxious emission in legend, thought to emanate from the earth and cause pestilence.
- This indulgence, especially so on the part of an ex-president, is something of a mephitis, an abyssal seeking of ever lower depths and ever more perverse rhetorical indulgences. The Volokh Conspiracy » The Clinton Terror Bill
- It is the harm in a few big mephitis that decorate generation is the greatest.
- Arizona skunk (Mephitis mesomelas estor), badgers (Taxidea taxus), and the bears mentioned previously. Tseh So, a Small House Ruin, Chaco Canyon, New Mexico :