Note: Our Sixth Annual 15-Second Vocabulary Video Challenge is underway. It will run until Feb. 18.
fetid ˈfe-təd , ˈfē-tid adjective
: offensively malodorous; having a bad smell
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The word fetid has appeared in 26 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on Sept. 21 in “In Sweden, Trash Heats Homes, Powers Buses and Fuels Taxi Fleets” by Amy Yee:
LINKOPING, Sweden — In a cavernous room filled with garbage, a giant mechanical claw reaches down and grabs five tons of trash. As a technician in a control room maneuvers the spiderlike crane, the claw drops its moldering harvest down a 10-story shaft into a boiler that is hotter than 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit. A fetid odor emanates from plastic trash bags discarded by hundreds of thousands of homes.
The process continues 24 hours a day to help fuel this power plant run by Tekniska Verken, a municipal government company in Linköping, a city 125 miles south of Stockholm. It is one of Sweden’s 34 “waste-to-energy” power plants. Instead of burning coal or gas, this power plant burns trash.
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