Stinker is from the verb 'stink' (Old English 'stincan', to emit a smell) plus the agentive suffix '-er'; the contemptuous personal sense developed colloquially. Important recorded forms include stincan (Old English). Morphologically, the word preserves a built structure whose named elements carry the historical sense into English. The semantic development is already visible in the history: an older concrete or specialized use was extended into the modern meaning rather than replaced by a separate origin. In current use it covers a contemptible person or thing, or something that stinks. The wider family includes related words such as stink, stinking, and stench.