mephitic

The Ivy League universities and their peer institutions are, for Will, the mephitic swamp from which most of what he detests in politics and culture emanates.

They invariably come laden with words that seem meant to prove his vocabulary is bigger than yours: flocculent, crapulent, caducous, anaglypta, mephitic, velutinous.

Like a mephitic vapor from a sword-and-sandals epic, it slips under the door frame and into your head.

They have preferred instead to keep them in limbo, and stir their anger and understandable bitterness into a mephitic brew with which to fuel India’s dangerous and extremely effective nationalistic narrative about Kashmir.

Congress, attempting investigations, will be lost in the thick, mephitic cloud of scandal, dodging rogue tweets as they come in.