Green’s Dictionary of Slang

to cause trouble, to create a disturbance; thus (nonce use) stink-kicker-upper.

1855		‘Coming Round the Horn’ in Lingenfelter et al. Songs of the Amer. West (1968) 24: A meeting now and then was held, which kicked up quite a stink.
1892		Potter Enterprise (Condersport, PA) 27 Apr. 2/2: Some political ringsters [...] proceed to kick up a stink.
1900		Boy’s Own Paper 15 Dec. 163: Higginson’s little bull’s-eye began to kick up a fearful stink.
1929		(con. 1917–18) C. MacArthur War Bugs 150: He kicked up a big stink.
1934		Mirror (Perth) 9 June 16/6: ‘Well, I mean I wouldn’t kick up a stink,’ he explained.
1951		S.F. Examiner 24 Jan. 27/1: He’s a stink-kicker-upper par excellence when it comes to Reds and Pinkos.
1953		T.A.G. Hungerford Riverslake 219: She was always kicking up a stink about something.
1960		B. Crump A Good Keen Man 181: Somebody had been kicking up a stink about a shooter who had cut his leg with a slasher.
1977		in K. Gilbert Living Black 81: It’s distant enough not to make them kick up a big stink.
1985		J. Sullivan ‘Watching the Girls go by’ Only Fools and Horses [TV script] I was still married to yer Aunt Ada and she’d have kicked up a stink!
1998		I. Welsh Filth 30: I’ll kick up a stink through the Federation and the craft if I have to.
2006		Irish Indep. (Dublin) 2 Oct. 6/6: [headline] Town chiefs kick up a stink over ‘sickening’ sewage stench.
2017		Calgary Herald (Alberta) 14 Dec. 47/4: Measures to limit tax deferral [...] will be buried in the 2018 budget and so less likely to kick up a stink.

to make a fuss; to cause trouble.

1861		(con. 1840s–50s) H. Mayhew London Labour and London Poor I 250/2: The newspapers of the district [...] had raised before the eye and mind of the public, what the ‘patterers’ of his class proverbially call a ‘stink’.
1875		Ottowa Free Trader (IL) 27 Feb. 4/1: It will not be long before the turning of the drainings of the filthy city [...] will raise a bigger political stink than the waters do now.
1885		Grenola Hornet (KS) 6 Mar. 1/2: They [...] nursed her tenderly for the scandalous statements they can induce her to make about the citizens, in order to raise a stink.
1895		Huntington Democrat (IN) 8 Aug. 4/2: ‘Oh, I know it will raise a stink for a while, but it will soon blow over’.
1910		L.A. Times pt VIII 16 Jan. 10/2: One of the first things [...] McCarthy did [...] was to raise a stink over a garbage plant bought before he became ruler.
1923		O. Onions Peace in Our Time 118: She raised a stink because she wasn’t in Tatler last week.
1941		G. Kersh They Die with Their Boots Clean 116: They’re raising a stink in some of the comic papers about ’ow silly it is to blanco your equipment.
1953		R. Chandler Long Good-Bye 59: Her face was beaten to a pulp. Second degree murder would be the best he could get, and even that would raise a stink.
1963		(con. 1944) L. Glassop Rats in New Guinea 116: In any case she would probably wake up and raise such a stink I’d find myself in the boob.
1975		Dly Indep. Jrnl (San Rafael, CA) 23 May 10/1: Some people don’t like hogs [...] nd these people raise a stink if they look out their bedroom window and see a giant sow.
1984		Albany Democrat Herald (OR) 11 May 4/1: He raised a stink about a Navy weapons system that had been inadequately tested.
1997		Dly Republican-Register (Mount Carmel, IL) 5 June 1/2: [headline] Marion residnt raised a stink over subdivision plan.
2006		Calgary Herald (Alberta) 4 Mar. F8/4: Marcel Duchamp’s urinal, which in 1917 he entered in a show as a work of art [...] He raised a stink when it was rejected.
2017		Fort Collins Coloradoan (CO) 2 July PA5/2: ‘He’s raising a stink [...] for the folks who can’t afford it’.

a motorbike.

1919

‘Bartimeus’ ‘The Wooing of Mouldy Jakes’ in Awfully Big Adventure 17: How would you like to [...] ride eighty miles carrying spare parts on a stink-bike.

(US) something, or someone, disgusting or deplorable.

1931		P. Stevenson Gospel According to St Luke’s 200: Well you dirty sarcastic stink-bomb, you—.
1935		A.J. Pollock Und. Speaks n.p.: Stink bomb, scandalous divorce proceedings.
1943		Brownsville Herald (TX) 7 Dec. 4/6: [Walter] Winchell Fomests Hate and War [...] He is a stink bomb. He is a two-legged skunk.
1958		A. King Mine Enemy Grows Older (1959) 74: I thought I had better douse this stink bomb before he loused up my act.
1991		Jrnl Gaz. (Mattoon, IL) 5 Oct. 4/2: Oliver North [...] is a stink bomb.

see stinkpot n. (2)

(US) a repellent individual.

2002

News-Jrnl (Mansfield, OH) 15 Dec. 17/6: ‘He’s a stink-butt,’ my Mommy said.

a motorcar .

1901		Sporting Times 27 Apr. 21: The advent of the stink-car was almost as mournful a feature in the proceedings as was the mob of habitual bookmakers ‘resting’ by the bars.
1913		J. London Valley of the Moon (1914) 361: Horseflesh is a hobby of mine. Don’t think otherwise because I am running a stink engine.

see separate entries.

see separate entries.

(S.Afr.) a lavatory.

1992

P. Slabolepszy ‘Return of Elvis’ Mooi Street (1994) 312: Throwing Jeyes Fluid [...] down that stinkgat is not going to help.

a lavatory.

1948		S.L. Elliott Rusty Bugles I ii: He writes all about the food and the stink-hole outside the Mess and no leave for twenty-three months.
1952		(con. 1944) Wilder & Blum Stalag 17 [film script] 125: [In Latrine] We’re busting out of this stink-hole in exactly [...] one minute and twenty seconds.

see separate entry.

(N.Z.) an automobile.

1914

N.Z. Truth 4 July 4/6: The other flash stink-wagon was drawn up ready to take a party of young ladies.

1. a cigar.

1945

J. Archibald ‘Smoke Scream’ in 10-Story Detective Feb. 🌐 So I says I will smoke this buck stinkweed [...] I take a light and start puffing away.

2. (drugs) marijuana.

1950		Goldin et al. DAUL 212/1: Stinkweed. Marijuana.
1977		L. Young et al. Recreational Drugs.
2001		ONDCP Street Terms 20: Stink weed — Marijuana.

3. a smoker of marijuana.

1952

Lait & Mortimer USA Confidential 29: New York’s pink little stink-weed commissioned a committee of dizzy do-gooders to report on the reefer situation.

a great deal of, a large amount of.

1977

I. Shaw Beggarman, Thief (1993) 406: We’d’ve been in a stink of a mess without him .

(W.I.) to behave badly, to start a noisy argument.

1996

Allsopp Dict. Carib. Eng. Usage.

intensely, furiously.

1922		E. Raymond Tell England (1965) 251: Apparently the East Cheshires are holding an awkward position on a place called Fusilier Bluff, and being killed like stink by a well-placed whizz-bang gun.
1937		J. Curtis You’re in the Racket, Too 93: She would probably scream like stink if she awakened.
1946		(con. 1912) B. Marshall George Brown’s Schooldays 157: I hope to stink the old swine’s right because like that they won’t plough me for Sandhurst.
1947		J. Maclaren-Ross ‘The Dark Diceman’ in Bitten by the Tarantula (2005) 203: Bogart’s planning like stink.
1959		C. Lee diary 30 Apr. in Eight Bells & Top Masts (2001) 206: Chippie’s ta-fong [i.e. typhoon] was really blowing like stink right up our chuff .
1975		in S. Wilson I Could Be Happy 237: Darling boy, I miss you like stink, and I shall be the happiest girl in the world when I come to meet you off your boat.
1981		Finlay & Sheppard Across the South Pacific 200: They all work like stink. Long hours. No overtime.
1990		R. Salisbury Sweet Thursday 231: I’ll have to move like stink to catch up.
2002		J. Richardson How to Build a Small-Block Chevy for the Street 14: If you find a rebuildable 302 of either configuration, grab it. [...] They go like stink right out of the box.

the anus.

1811

Lex. Balatronicum n.p.: spice islands. [...] Stink-hole bay or dilberry creek. The fundament.

(US) very closely.

2017

D. Jenkins Stick a Fork In Me 47: ‘Football is a man’s game played down in the trenches, stink on stink’.

to make a foolish blunder, to be very gullible.

1809

B.H. Malkin (trans.) Adventures of Gil Blas (1822) II 177: Simple and cullible, so far from smelling out the rat, he took his stink for a nosegay.