MEPHITICAL • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Mephitical

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adjective

Mephitical, Mephitic adj.

Tending to destroy life; poisonous; noxious; as, mephitic exhalations; mephitic regions.

Offensive to the smell; as, mephitic odors.

Mephitic air (Chem.), carbon dioxide; so called because of its deadly suffocating power. See Carbonic acid, under Carbonic.

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Etymology of 'Mephitical'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Mephitical" Quotes from Famous Books

... and rioting the transformed idealist passed through many stages of the journey down a certain dark and mephitic valley not of amelioration. With the bitter industrial conflict to feed it, a slow fire within him ate its way into all the foundations, and as the fair superstructure of character settled, the moral perpendiculars and planes of projection ...

— The Price • Francis Lynde

... discontinued the suction ventilation. The underground thousands, in mortal terror of the non-existent third-rail danger, groped their way painfully to the stations. With inconceivable swiftness the mephitic vapors gathered. Strong men staggered fainting into the streets. When revived they told dreadful tales of stumbling over windrows of bodies ...

— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White

... as little as she what was the positive cause of Mr. Romfrey's chastisement of Dr. Shrapnel. 'Cause enough, I don't doubt,' he said, and cited the mephitic letter. ...

— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... larger public has discovered that the music which has been consorted with the old pictures, actions, and words has added to them an element either of charm or expressive potentiality hitherto felt to be lacking. Is that true? Has a rock of offense been removed? Has a mephitic odor been changed to a sweet savor by the subtle alchemy of the musical composer? Has a drama abhorrent, bestial, repellent, and loathsome been changed into a thing of delectability by the potent agency of music? It used to be said ...

— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... trouble in that respect. Yet, even then, it was found to be impossible to penetrate to the subterranean chambers at once, for when an attempt was made to do so, the torches which the would-be explorers carried refused to burn in the mephitic atmosphere; and time therefore had to be allowed for the exterior air to penetrate and displace the poisonous vapours which had accumulated in the chambers during the many years that they had remained ...

— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... designation. He was born at Hierapolis, in Phrygia, a town between the rivers Lycus and Meander, and considered by some to be the capital of the province. The town possessed several natural wonders—sacred springs, stalactite grottoes, and a deep cavern remarkable for its mephitic exhalations. It is more interesting to us to know that it was within a few miles of Colossae and Laodicea, and is mentioned by St. Paul (Col. iv. 13) in connexion with those two cities. It must, therefore, have possessed a Christian Church from the earliest times, and, if Epictetus spent any ...

— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar