Word Pronunciation & Dictionary

code smell

Word Rarity Uncommon

Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.39 in modern English

Syllables: code s-mell
IPA

14

Scrabble Score

9

Letters

2

Syllables

7

Unique Chars

Meaning

noun

Anything in a program's source code that suggests the presence of a design problem.

Example Sentences

"A well-known code smell is as follows: a function should do one thing."

Etymology

Analogous to a bad smell indicating e.g. rotten food. Apparently coined by American software engineer Kent Beck, in the late 1990s. Popularized via the book Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code, co-authored by Beck.

Inflected Forms

code smells (plural)

Phrases

clean code

Frequently Paired Words

clean code refactoring

Questions

What does code smell mean?: Anything in a program's source code that suggests the presence of a design problem.
Where does code smell come from?: Analogous to a bad smell indicating e.g. rotten food. Apparently coined by American software engineer Kent Beck, in the late 1990s. Popularized via the book Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code, co-authored by Beck.

How to pronounce code smell

Open the pronunciation page — Open the Speakur entry for “code smell”.
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