stinking weed
- noun
- Indian
:
hierba hedionda
- During the hike, we noticed patches of stinking weed growing along the path, releasing a strong, unpleasant fragrance.
Examples
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Farmers often struggle to control the stinking weed that invades their crops and emits an unpleasant odor.
-
We've got God knows how much of this stinking weed; we've got a shitload of cash; and we've got a... traffic warden.
Fiction book (1998) -
The gardener complained that the stinking weed was taking over the flower beds with its foul smell.
Synonyms
A tropical bush with many leaves that smells unpleasant and whose seeds are sometimes mixed with coffee
A leafy tropical shrub with a strong bad smell whose seeds are sometimes mixed with coffee
A tropical shrub with many leaves whose seeds smell bad and people use to make cheap coffee
A leafy tropical shrub with a strong smell whose seeds are sometimes mixed with coffee
A tropical shrub whose seeds are sometimes roasted and used as fake coffee
How Smelly
- Indian
165
1.0
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase is compositionally transparent: 'stinking' describes a strong unpleasant odor and 'weed' denotes an unwanted wild plant, so a B1 learner who knows both words will understand it as a plant that smells bad. Botanical specifics in the dictionary entry are additional encyclopedic information but do not change the easily derivable core meaning.
Etymology
Stinking weed is the name of a tropical plant with a very bad smell: the word stinking means it 'stinks' and weed shows it was unwanted. Its seeds were once mixed into coffee to make more drink, so the plant became known as both smelly and cheap.