stinker

One who stinks.

Skunks are the worst stinkers in the animal kingdom.

A contemptible person or thing.

"Stop squallin', you little stinker!" She struck the child with her open hand across the face.

"But it's far worse for me," said Edmund, "because you'll at least have a room of your own and I shall have to share a bedroom with that record stinker, Eustace."

Something difficult (e.g. a given puzzle) or unpleasant (e.g. negative review, nasty letter).

Today's crossword is a stinker.

I number several authors among my acquaintance […] and they invariably become all of a doodah when they read a stinker in the press about their latest effort.

Something of poor quality.

The barely-released stinker Dark Tide continues Stockwell’s fetishistic pattern, coming alive whenever it’s paddling among the sharks off the South African coast and settling in for a long snooze once it gets back on the boat or reaches dry land.

Steven Pinker, Rational Thinker: His new book is a stinker. [title]

Any of several species of large Antarctic petrels which feed on blubber and carrion and have an offensive odour, such as the giant fulmar.