The phrase "aroma of decay" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe a smell that is associated with something that is rotting or decomposing, often in a literary or descriptive context.
Example: "As they walked through the abandoned house, the aroma of decay filled the air, making it clear that no one had lived there for years."
Alternatives: "scent of decomposition" or "odor of rot".
Dust gyrated along the shafts of sunlight like plankton under a microscope, and the room was full of the aroma of decay.
But just smelling like a manure pile or the rotting carcass of some poor field mouse may not be enough to attract the flies, so skunk cabbages, like some other members of the aroid family (which includes anthurium, calla lily and Jack-in-the-pulpit), offer the aroma of decay plus a little something extra -- heat.
He'll serve a thrush with its decapitated head, or fire-roast a black grouse in hay, or slaughter a geriatric dairy cow and then dry-age it for nine months until, he writes, "the pure flavor of meat becomes secondary to the aromas of controlled decay... rather like a cheese".
IN the depths of a New York City winter, it's easy to forget what tropical warmth really feels like -- that close, comforting pressure on your bare skin, the humid aroma of vegetal growth and decay, the way vistas both urban and pastoral seem to shimmer, sigh and relax in the heat.
The house I grew up in had been empty for years before my parents bought it, but its state of decay and its lingering aroma were mostly owed, apparently, to the lifestyle of the previous occupant.
The aroma of September, of damp earth and decaying grass, hung in the air, though there was, as yet, no hint of autumn colour in the trees.
All that lovely lucre makes me go all giddy, though it could be the heady aroma emanating from the big polypropylene vats nearby, half-filled with apples and grapes, just beginning their process of decay and fermentation.
Better to make a friend of decay.
There were, however, signs of decay.
But there are alarming signs of decay.
"The inevitability of decay," Hawke said.
