Stunk is the past participle of the verb to stink, which means to smell really bad. If your gym shoes stunk after soccer practice yesterday, they gave off an unpleasant odor that made people wrinkle their noses. When the garbage stunk up the whole kitchen last week, its smell filled the room.

The word also means to be very bad at something or to perform poorly. If someone says “I stunk at that piano recital,” they mean they played badly. When a movie stunk, it was terrible and disappointed everyone who watched it. You might tell a friend, “That math test stunk,” meaning it was really difficult or unfair.

The literal smell meaning and the “being bad” meaning connect through the same feeling of unpleasantness. Just as a bad smell makes you want to get away, a poor performance or disappointing experience leaves that same sour feeling. Both uses of stunk describe something that was definitely not good.

Note that while stank is the simple past tense, stunk is also used as a simple past tense form in modern speech, especially in American English.