What's a miasma?

Question

What the hell is miasma?????

Answer 1

miasma:

n. pl. mi·as·mas or mi·as·ma·ta (-m-t)
1. A noxious atmosphere or influence: "The family affection, the family expectations, seemed to permeate the atmosphere . . . like a coiling miasma" Louis Auchincloss.
2.
a. A poisonous atmosphere formerly thought to rise from swamps and putrid matter and cause disease.
b. A thick vaporous atmosphere or emanation: wreathed in a miasma of cigarette smoke.

Answer 2

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

A vaporous exhalation (as of marshes or putrid matter) formerly thought to cause disease; broadly, a thick vaporous atmosphere or emanation.

A harmful or corrupting atmosphere or influence; also, an atmosphere that obscures; a fog

Example 1
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

Example 2
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

Example 3
He spends whatever money he has on hash and eventually heroin . . . and proceeds to sink into a miasma of anger and alienation

Answer 3

summarizing the wikipedia definition, miasma is the fumes and vapors of decomposed matter (like a dead body i guess) that was once believed to cause diseases and death.

I don't see a television reference anywhere...

Answer 4

According to the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary it means 1) a vaporous exhalation formerly believed to cause disease; also a heavy vaporous emanation or atmosphere. 2) an influence or atmosphere that tends to deplete or corrupt; also an atmosphere that corrupts.

Answer 5

wrong category, i guess...
Miasma, Greek word for anything that is foul, ethically obcene.

Answer 6

It is an album by the Black Dahlia Murder Band