reek

• enPR: rēk, IPA^(key): /riːk/
• Rhymes: -iːk
• Homophone: wreak

• Audio (UK):

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From Middle English rek, reke (“smoke”), from Old English rēc, from Proto-West Germanic *rauki, from Proto-Germanic *raukiz, from Proto-Indo-European *rowgi-.

See also West Frisian reek, riik, Dutch rook, Low German Röök, German Rauch, Danish røg, Norwegian Bokmål røyk; also Lithuanian rū̃kti (“to smoke”), rū̃kas (“smoke, fog”), Albanian regj (“to tan”).^[1]

reek (countable and uncountable, plural reeks)

1. A strong unpleasant smell.
2. (Scotland) Vapour; steam; smoke; fume.
   • c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merry Wiues of Windsor”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, (please specify the act number in uppercase Roman numerals, and the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals):

     Thou mightst as well say, I loue to walke by the
     Counter-gate, which is as hatefull to me, as the reeke of
     a Lime-kill.

   • 1768, Alexander Ross (poet), "Helenore; or, the fortunate Shepherdess": a Poem in the Broad Scoth Dialect

     Now, by this time, the sun begins to leam,

     And lit the hill-heads with his morning beam;

     And birds, and beasts, and folk to be a-steer,

     And clouds o’ reek frae lum heads to appear.

   • 1913, Arthur Conan Doyle, “(please specify the page)”, in The Poison Belt […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC:

     The blue reeks of smoke from the cottages gave the whole widespread landscape an air of settled order and homely comfort.

• peat-reek
• reek-silver

From Middle English reken (“to smoke”), from Old English rēocan, from Proto-West Germanic *reukan, from Proto-Germanic *reukaną, from Proto-Indo-European *rougi-. See above.

Related to Dutch ruiken, Low German rüken, German riechen, Danish ryge, Swedish ryka.

reek (third-person singular simple present reeks, present participle reeking, simple past and past participle reeked)

1. (intransitive) To have or give off a strong, unpleasant smell.

   You reek of perfume.

   Your fridge reeks of egg.

2. (intransitive, figuratively) To be evidently associated with something unpleasant.

   The boss appointing his nephew as a director reeks of nepotism.

3. (archaic, intransitive) To be emitted or exhaled, emanate, as of vapour or perfume.
4. (archaic, intransitive) To emit smoke or vapour; to steam.
   • 1660, Henry More, An Explanation of the Grand Mystery of Godliness, page 236:

     […] innumerable Legions of his Angels of Light, the warm gleames of whose presence is able to make the Mountains to reek and smoak, and to awake that fiery principle that lies dormient in the Earth into a devouring flame.

5. (transitive, rare) To cause (something) to smell. [from 19th c.]
   • 1880, Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur:

     The slaughter of lambs in offering reeked the fore-courts of the Temple.

   • 2017, Benjamin Myers, The Gallows Pole, Bloomsbury, published 2019, page 43:

     [I]f we get caught we're for the gibbet and the chains. Our flesh will reek the wind.

6. (now rare, of rain or snow) To fall in such a way (e.g. particularly finely or heavily) as to resemble smoke.
   • 1837, Robert Mudie, Spring, or the causes, appearances, and effects, of the seasonal renovations of nature in all climats, page 266:

     ... the snow still darkens the air, and reeks along the curling wreaths, as if each were a furnace.

   • 1888, William Wilthew Fenn, A professional secret, and other tales, page 44:

     the sun, which had been occasionally peeping from amidst the windy, rain-reeking clouds, was getting ominously low. One part, however, of the man's prophecy was not borne out - the weather steadily improved and the wind dropped.

   • 1922, Art and Archaeology, page 62:

     Great Serpents, like undulating clouds, / Crested, rain-reeking. Their bellies blacken the sky; / Their fierce rains flood earth's hill-rimmed vale; / Their drumming is from mountain to mountain; / From horizon to horizon is their thunder.

• lang may yer lum reek

From Middle English reke (“heap, pile”), from Old English hrēac.

reek (plural reeks)

1. A pile, a heap (as of snow, hay, etc).
   • 1855, The Economist, page 506:

     The fen "dikes" have been filled-in in some districts; and the black reeks remind one of snow-reeks, except for their blackness.

   • 1874, Edward PEACOCK (F.S.A.), John Markenfield. A Novel, page 118:

     "There'll be snow-reeks as high as houses if I wait half-an-hour longer." "There'll be no occasion for ye to wade thruff snaw-reeks at all, if ye'll go wi' me. I'll tak ye across th' warpin' till ye get to the sand-lane end,  […]

   • 2013 September 2, Alice Taylor, To School Through the Fields, The O'Brien Press, →ISBN:

     Here a reek of straw was made, and as the reek of corn reduced in size this rose higher; there was skill in making a well balanced reek. The story of the harvest was told at the front of the thresher.

Probably a transferred use (after Irish cruach (“stack (of corn), pile, mountain, hill”)) of a variant of rick, with which it is cognate.

reek (plural reeks)

1. (Ireland) A hill; a mountain.

• Bill Griffiths, editor (2004), “reek”, in A Dictionary of North East Dialect, Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear: Northumbria University Press, →ISBN.
• Northumberland Words, English Dialect Society, R. Oliver Heslop, 1893–4
• “Reek”, in Palgrave’s Word List: Durham & Tyneside Dialect Group‎^[1], archived from the original on 5 September 2024, from F[rancis] M[ilnes] T[emple] Palgrave, A List of Words and Phrases in Everyday Use by the Natives of Hetton-le-Hole in the County of Durham […] (Publications of the English Dialect Society; 74), London: Published for the English Dialect Society by Henry Frowde, Oxford University Press, 1896, →OCLC.
• Frank Graham, editor (1987), “REEK”, in The New Geordie Dictionary, Rothbury, Northumberland: Butler Publishing, →ISBN.
• Notes:

• eker, kere

From Middle English rek, reke (“smoke”), from Old English rēc, rīec, from Proto-West Germanic *rauki, from Proto-Germanic *raukiz. Compare Swedish rök.

reek (plural reeks)

1. Vapour; steam; smoke; fume
2. A morning mist rising out of the ground.
3. The act of smoking a pipe or cigarette, a whiff, puff.

reek (third-person singular simple present reeks, present participle reekin, simple past reekt, past participle reekt)

1. Of a chimney: to emit smoke, to fail to emit smoke properly, sending it back into the room.
2. To smoke a pipe etc. To emit vapour or steam.
3. To show anger or fury, to fume, pour out one's spleen.

From Old Frisian rēk, from Proto-West Germanic *rauki, from Proto-Germanic *raukiz.

• IPA^(key): /reːk/

reek c (no plural)

1. smoke

• riik

• “reek”, in Wurdboek fan de Fryske taal (in Dutch), 2011