[danielEM]

"an unreliable but still useful indication that there may be something wrong in the design of the code"

Well, but you just proved the point - it can be described in non offensive manner. And more over, judging something based on gut feeling ("indication") may be actually even worse, as you may offend someone who did actually a good job.

Sorry if "nit picking", recently was reading a lot about burn outs in the industry, and this is a thing that did catch my attention...

[tpoacher]

I don't think it's meant to be offensive.

It's "smell" in the same sense as "something smells fishy here", or "I smell trouble", with smell serving the analogy of being the least specific of your senses, alluding to having a non-specific feeling rather than hard evidence about something. In theory there's no implication of a "repulsive / offensive smell" or "ew this code smells" in the phrase, like you seem to perceive it.

Granted, these things are subjective, but it's similar to complaining about the term black humour being racist, when black in this context is not meant to have any racial context.

[danielEM]

Agree, these are subjective, at the same time, when I think of it again, from technical standpoint such a comment or CR would be very low quality comment/CR.