Log in or Sign up

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. A noxious atmosphere or influence: "The family affection, the family expectations, seemed to permeate the atmosphere . . . like a coiling miasma” ( Louis Auchincloss).
  2. n. A poisonous atmosphere formerly thought to rise from swamps and putrid matter and cause disease.
  3. n. A thick vaporous atmosphere or emanation: wreathed in a miasma of cigarette smoke.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. n. The emanations or effluvia arising from the ground and floating in the atmosphere, considered to be infectious or otherwise injurious to health; noxious emanations; malaria. Also called aërial poison.

Wiktionary

  1. n. A noxious atmosphere or influence.
  2. n. A noxious atmosphere or emanation once thought to originate from swamps and waste to cause disease.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. n. Infectious particles or germs floating in the air; air made noxious by the presence of such particles or germs; noxious effluvia; malaria.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. unhealthy vapors rising from the ground or other sources
  2. n. an unwholesome atmosphere

Etymologies

  1. Greek, pollution, stain, from miainein, to pollute.

Examples

  • “Again, exposition; but a key thing to consider: the Greek concept of miasma is at play here.”

    More on Prologues

  • “I find the best way to address this miasma is with a high-end programmable universal remote.”

    Controlling the Living Room - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

  • “Micael Ewans, The Everyman Library, 1996), miasma is defined as: "Pollution; the word embraces both literal dirt and what we would call psychic pollution incurred by breaches of taboo, e.e. bloodshed.”

    Archive 2006-02-01

  • “Actually I think there is scope here for investigating nomology as a non-scientific sense of possibility, investigating the way beliefs in Natural, Social or Divine order might also have functioned (and might still do) to construct "laws of reality" -- looking at the ancient concept of "miasma" as a breaching of those laws, for example, and a breaching that is integral to the narratives of Greek Tragedy.”

    Archive 2008-02-01

  • “It was the first time a city had grown so big, and while it had a rudimentary idea of a public health system, this system was based on the "miasma" theory of disease: that illness was the result of smelling bad smells.”

    Boing Boing: November 26, 2006 - December 2, 2006 Archives

  • “The idea of the "miasma", the metaphoric association of morality with dirt, disease, infection, an "evil influence", was with us even in the supposedly more enlightened secular field of medicine, right up until micro-biology made it obsolete.”

    Archive 2006-02-01

  • “Given that the notion of being morally unclean goes back at least to the Hittites, and that the Greeks had their own version in the shape of "miasma", I smell a root metaphor here, one shared by polytheist and monotheist cultures alike.”

    The Stain of Sin

  • “According to the conventional wisdom, Carter was dour and he created a kind of miasma that affected the country for the worse.”

    Commander in Grief

  • “Uh-oh, the miasma is back!”

    Think Progress » The White House Version of Success

  • “Without looking at a single bacterium, Snow managed statistically and cartographically to trace an outbreak back to its source, and in so doing set the groundwork for a shift within the scientific community from the concept of "miasma" to modern-day germ theory.”

    SEEDMAGAZINE.COM

Show 10 more examples...

Related Words

Log in or sign up to add your own related words.

Lists

These user-created lists contain the word ‘miasma’.

More lists containing ‘miasma’

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • kingparton Labor hides itself in every mode and form... it keeps the cow out of the garden, the rain out of the library, the miasma out of the town.

    Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Perpetual Forces" Jul 24, 2011
  • hernesheir Myasthma Sep 2, 2009
  • renumeratedfrog For some reason, this word reminds of smegma. :P Aug 24, 2008
  • yarb ...endangered by serpents, savages, tigers, poisonous miasmas, with all the other common perils incident to wandering in the heart of unknown regions.

    - Melville, Moby-Dick, ch. 45 Jul 24, 2008
  • reesetee That's what I always think when I see this word! Jul 21, 2008
  • chained_bear HA!! Jul 16, 2008
  • dontcry "Seamus, why are ya weezin'?"

    "Ach, it's miasma." Jul 16, 2008
  • mialuthien I object to mia part of it. No syllable of mine should ever be constrained to be a constituent part of such an ugly-smelling word, ugh. Mia smells like roses. Jul 16, 2008
  • chained_bear I never see this word without thinking "fetid" in front of it. Jul 16, 2008
  • misterpolly "It's miasma," he said breathlessly. Jan 14, 2008
  • seanahan The plural is listed as mismata. Jul 28, 2007

‘miasma’ has been looked up 3035 times, loved by 27 people, added to 222 lists, commented on 11 times, and has a Scrabble score of 10.