smell (redirected from smelling)

come out/up smelling of roses (British & Australian, American)

if you come out smelling of roses, people believe you are good and honest after a difficult situation which could have made you seem bad or dishonest. There was a major fraud investigation, but Smith still came out smelling of roses.

See also: come, rose

smell a rat

to start to believe that something is wrong about a situation, especially that someone is being dishonest. She smelled a rat when she phoned him at the office where he was supposed to be working late and he wasn't there.

See also: rat

smell fishy (informal)

if a situation or an explanation smells fishy, it causes you to think that someone is being dishonest. Webbers's account of what he was doing that evening smells a bit fishy to me.

smell/stink to high heaven

to smell very bad. That chicken farm stinks to high heaven.

See also: heaven, high, stink

Wake up and smell the coffee!

something that you say in order to tell someone that they should try to understand the true facts of a situation or that they should give more attention to what is happening around them. It's time you woke up and smelled the coffee, Don. We're just not getting enough business any more.

See also: coffee, wake

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pass the smell test

to be morally acceptable. Robinson's removal as an independent investigator doesn't pass the smell test, and many believe it was done for political reasons.

Usage notes: often used in negative sentences, as in the example

See also: pass, test

smell a rat

to believe something is wrong. When my husband started working late three or four times a week, I smelled a rat.

See also: rat

(come up) smelling like a rose

to end something positively or as a winner. Everyone thought he was guilty, but Smith still came up smelling like a rose. Hahn made a terrible play in the first half, but he was smelling like a rose by the finish.

See also: like, rose

wake up and smell the coffee

to pay attention and do something about a situation. Some parents just deny their kids are having problems, and they'd better wake up and smell the coffee.

See also: coffee, wake