That merry scamp's face whose beaming had so often restored serenity to the priest's sombre physiognomy, was now powerless to melt the gloom which grew more dense every day over that corrupted,
mephitic, and stagnant soul.
His little wife, insensible to all appearance, was slung over his great shoulder, and he blundered and thundered up the stair, scrambling and tripping, but carrying himself and her through sheer will-force through that mephitic atmosphere to the haven of temporary safety.
The poison may be a mere stratum or layer in the ether--a mephitic Gulf Stream across that mighty ocean in which we float.
The air he inhaled was no longer pure, but thick and
mephitic, -- he was in prison.
From this crawling flapping mass of obscene reptilian life came the shocking clamor which filled the air and the
mephitic, horrible, musty odor which turned us sick.
The
mephitic gases of that region intoxicate the brain.
Although she began her research before the sinkhole that is Donald Trump swallowed the Republican Party and released its
mephitic fumes on the general public, she came to know a group of likely Trump voters, and one of the merits of her book is to give a more thoughtful, nuanced view of his constituency than do newspaper snapshots of aggrieved white nationalists.
He is new air, too, but air neither fresh nor healthy; he is, rather, a storm gusting hot and
mephitic wind.
This reflex of memory and ritual belongs as much to the chamberlains as it does to Macbeth, who, despite his memory being a
mephitic fume of horror and revulsion and his nature being drenched in Duncan's blood, seeks God's blessing as earnestly as the men he is about to slaughter.
The lecture --a typical Higher Critical exposition of the sources from which the idea of the divinity of Christ sprang--proves more intellectual than the service at Rome, though also more stifling: although "Truth's atmosphere may grow
mephitic / When Papist struggles with Dissenter" (900-01),
The scent everyone said was
mephitic, but we stayed.
mephitic - of noxious stench from atmospheric pollution