Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (also stinking-ass) of individuals, a general negative intensifier, e.g., disgusting, repellent, odious; immoral.

1611		Middleton No Wit or Help like a Womans (1657) I i: Y’are in a Quagmire both; should I release you now, Your wits would both come home in a stinking pickle.
1623		Webster Devil’s Law-Case IV ii: For I dare sweare that you will sweare a lye, A very filthy, stinking, rotten lye.
1665		‘R.M.’ Scarronides 75: Thou stinking whore.
1688		J. Crowne City Politicks I i: I’ll teach you to play the knave, you stinking damn’d fellow you!
1697		Cibber Womans Wit IV i: I’ll teach you to debauch my Son! I will, you stinking Jade you.
1728		Vanbrugh & Cibber Provoked Husband IV i: Is not this better than throwing so much away, after a stinking Pack of Fox-hounds, in the Country?
1741		‘Conny Keyber’ An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews 13: Why how now Saucy Chops, Boldface, says he [...] you are a d—d, impertinent, stinking, cursed, confounded Jade.
a.1749		Robertson of Struan ‘On Mris. F-----n’ in Poems (1752) 82: Unless his full spermatick Sluice / Was ready to run o’er, / Who’d spill a Drop of wholsom Juice / On such a stinking Whore?
1772		Bridges Burlesque Homer (3rd edn) 388: For, had Fortune, ever fickle, / Now left him in a stinking pickle.
1797		Bridges Burlesque Homer (4th edn) II 184: [as cit. 1772].
1821		in J.B. Philippe Free Mulatto (1987) 143: Sir Ralph J. Woodford’s worthy secretary [...] wrote to Mr. Mathison as follows: ‘Dear M-, have you any record of this damned, nasty, ugly, stinking, blood of a bitch? He arrived in 1817, when Captain Careless of your corps kept our books.’.
1835		‘Moses Samuels & The Nasty Little Vomans’ in Secret Songster 11: And she svore, so help her Jacobs, I’d been vith a stinking whore.
1841		‘Crikey! What Will Master Say?’ Dublin Comic Songster 20: To get the dish I then did try, / But got instead a stinking eye!
1851		M. Reid Scalp-Hunters II 120: Wagh! that was a stinkin’ pill, an’ no mistake.
1892		F. Remington letter 27 June in Splete Sel. Letters (1988) 140: D--- those stinking Russians.
1897		Dundee Eve. Teleg. 7 May 4/2: Feich! Sic stinkin’ trash steered by their lang tongues wad scunder a soo!
1904		Kipling ‘The Bonds of Discipline’ Traffics and Discoveries 48: He was trained man in a stinkin’ gunboat up the Saigon River.
1907		J. Corbin Cave Man 232: A duhrty trick, a sthinkin’ Irish trick.
1912		Truth (Wellington) 6 Apr. 6/3: The lot of the wife of a stinking Chow.
1912		E. Pugh Harry The Cockney 79: ‘Mary Kimball says you can keep your stinking letter,’ said Mary Kimball’s emissary, as she tossed the missive in my face.
1913		A. Lunn Harrovians 14: Thomson had done a stinking prose.
1916		Joyce Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man 57: It’s a stinking mean low trick, that’s what it is.
1920		E. Pound in Witemeyer Pound/Williams Correspondence (1996) 37: You lay back, you let me have the whole stinking sweat of providing the mechanical means for letting through the new movement.
1922		S. Lewis Babbitt (1974) 44: Supposing Lyte and I were stinking enough to want to ruin any fellow human.
1929		(con. c.1900s) J.B. Booth London Town 306: ‘Didn’t I ever tell you ’ow I got ’ome from a stinkin’ bad Epsom on ’orse ’air?’.
1938		X. Herbert Capricornia (1939) 117: When he saw old Fliegeltaub he hooted, ‘Bluidy awl’ Boche, wait’ll we get B’lin and see’t we do to bluidy awl Koyser [...] and Rotterdam and Amsterdam and Tinker’s Dam — Remem’er Belgium, ye rottendamn stinkin’ bluidy awl’ Hoon.
1940		E. O’Neill Long Day’s Journey into Night Act III: But to think [...] you can show yourself up before the whole town as such a stinking old tightwad!
1940		F. Bason Diary I (1950) 112: This will be a stinking Xmas. Dad in hospital.
1944		H. Brown Walk in Sun 47: ‘I don’t think they’re wide awake yet, but they’re going to be. It’s a stinking situation. Right?’ ‘Right!’ chorused the platoon.
1948		R. Park Harp in South 98: ‘Yer stinking stoolie’, remarked Flo.
1957		R. Prather Always Leave ’Em Dying 115: Maybe the Guardians wanted the gravy, or the glory, or maybe Trammel was just too damned stinking to live—but they knocked their boy off.
1959		F. Norman Fings I i: If only I could get me ’ands on a bit of gelt. I’d do this stinkin’ gaff up.
1959		K. Waterhouse Billy Liar (1962) 181: You miserable, lying, rotten, stinking get!
1964		L. Nkosi Rhythm of Violence III i: What are you doing with the body of a damn stinking kaffir?
1967		J. Wynnum I’m a Jack, All Right 7: There’s no point in fooling yourself, just to win at a stinking game of cards.
1968		N. Heard Howard Street 16: ‘There, you stinkin’ whore!’ he roared.
1976		P. Conroy Great Santini (1977) 287: Now that was an example of stinkin’ defense. Stinkin’.
1980		A. Fugard Tsotsi 71: Bloody stinking lot of white people. Here is your money and go back.
1992		S.L. Hills Tragic Magic 85: I was [...] living in this stinking-ass hotel for Bowery bums.
2000		Guardian Rev. 19 May 6: Such films are always scabby, stinking dogs.
2019		New European 11-17 July 21/3: He felt they had put a ‘stinking mob’ in charge of the newspaper group.

2. of inanimate objects, a general intensifier, a euph. for damned adj., fucking adj. etc.

1690		‘Teague’ Teagueland Jests I 14: I found you here in a Stinking Pickle, I carried you home [...] In fine, I sav’d you [...] from the Gallows.
1908		A.N. Lyons Arthur’s 61: Well, I knowed ’im for one o’ them furrin-born beggars be ’is stinkin’ politeness.
1928		Hecht & MacArthur Front Page Act II: I got a stinking hunch he’s right in this building.
1930		L. Johnson ‘On the Wall’ 🎵 I mean you can snatch it, you can break it, hang it on the stinking wall .
1946		W.R. Burnett Romelle 74: ‘Every time I see Denise, or think of her, ‘ he said, ‘it reminds me of that place where you worked—that stinking hole!’ .
1952		J. Jones From Here to Eternity (1998) 54: A dumb bastard that [...] gets stinking drunk up at the stinking Officers Club.
1959		E. De Roo Go, Man, Go! 112: You with your stinkin’ meetings all hours of the night.
1964		P. Terson Night to Make the Angels Weep (1967) I iii: Stay here with those stinkin’ rabbits and don’t let ’m go.
1973		(con. 1940s–60s) Hogbotel & ffuckes ‘The New People’s Flag’ in Snatches and Lays 51: Then raise that stinking flag on high!
1982		J. Davis Kullark 56: Grog, that’s what the trouble is in this house, stinkin’ grog.
2005		Mad mag. Dec. 37: Nineteen stinkin’ kids [...] an’ ya think I get one Mother’s Day card?

3. (Aus.) incompetent.

1923

Gippsland Times (Vic.) 1 Oct. 5/3: An’ then at post-ole sinkin’ / Yer’ll [fi]nd I ain’t too stinkin’, / Yew will reckernize, I’m thinkin’, / I’m th’ busiest uv cubs.