smell of the lamp
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
A sign of something being overstudied or overly researched
Literally: odor of a lamp
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
It is said of some speeches that they smell of the lamp.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “smell of the lamp” mean?
A sign of something being overstudied or overly researched Literally: odor of a lamp
Is “smell of the lamp” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.