Word of the Day

miasma \my-AZ-muh; mee-\, noun:
1. A vaporous exhalation (as of marshes or putrid matter) formerly thought to cause disease; broadly, a thick vaporous atmosphere or emanation.
2. A harmful or corrupting atmosphere or influence; also, an atmosphere that obscures; a fog.

The critics, he says, "will sit in their large automobiles, spewing a miasma of toxic gas into the atmosphere, and they will thank you for not smoking a cigarette."
--Charles E. Little, "No One Communes Anymore," [1]New York
Times, October 17, 1993

To destroy such prejudices, which many a time rise and spread themselves like a miasma, is an imperative duty of theory, for the misbegotten offspring of human reason can also be in turn destroyed by pure reason.
--Carl von Clausewitz, [2]On War (Translated by Colonel
James John Graham)

He spends whatever money he has on hash and eventually heroin . . . and proceeds to sink into a miasma of anger
and alienation.
--Jhumpa Lahiri, "Money Talks in Pakistan," [3]New York
Times, March 12, 2000

Girls of my generation stumbled through much of our early adolescence in a dense miasma of longing.
--Ellen Pall, "She had a Crush on Them," [4]New York Times,
July 29, 1990

Miasma comes from Greek miasma, "pollution," from miainein, "to pollute."