get a whiff

"If they had ever got a whiff of him doing anything wrong they would probably have topped him."

I supposed she must have been sniffing around, wanting to get a whiff of my science project for next year.

So Katie, not to be horribly cynical, but I got a whiff of a savior complex from some of Marie’s interviews.

Another happy note about Paul’s Juke Joint: Patrons don’t get a whiff of the urinal cake in the men’s room every time the bathroom door swings open.

While the legend of how “Citizen Kane” came to be has long been subject to debate, Schulman focuses on what happened when William Randolph Hearst got a whiff of the title character’s similarities to himself.