To fill or pervade with a bad smell; to make something smell foul.
From the prefix be- plus smell (Old English smiellan, origin uncertain but possibly related to smoke). The be- prefix here intensifies the smell's pervasiveness rather than creating a new meaning.
Smell is one of the hardest senses to describe in English—we lack precise smell words compared to languages like Dutch or Japanese. That's why old words like 'besmell' fade away; modern English relies on combinations like 'smells badly of' instead of single words.
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