From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishmiasmami‧as‧ma /miˈæzmə, maɪ-/ noun [singular] literary 1 DNALdirty air or a thick unpleasant mist that smells bad He looked up at me through a miasma of cigarette smoke. A foul miasma lay over the town.2 BADan evil influence or feeling that seems to surround a person or placemiasma of The miasma of defeat hung over them.
Examples from the Corpus
miasma• Suspicion rose like a miasma from which it was impossible ever to take a breath.• You feel the devastation of the war like a miasma over the battlefield.• An acrid miasma came from the sewage plant.• Acrid miasmas coiled from ventilation ducts and sewage flooded avenues.• But here the clouds converge and mist falls and general miasma overtakes the public brain.• I went to wash up as the table edge trembled to a familiar sick-to-the-gut miasma of nothingness.• A lurid miasma dazed his vision.• The two of them now resembled a superstitious swamp devil, humming, hovering, and plowing through the miasma.Origin miasma (1600-1700) Greek “making dirty” 