apestar

To stink or reek (apesta a humo), and colloquially, to be terrible or awful at something (apesto en matemáticas) or for a situation to be thoroughly unpleasant (este plan apesta). The literal and figurative senses are both extremely common in everyday speech.

• Esta habitación apesta a cigarrillo. — This room reeks of cigarette smoke.
• Apesto jugando al ajedrez. — I'm terrible at chess.
• El plan que propusiste apesta. — The plan you proposed is awful.

Using apestar transitively to mean "to make something stink" without checking the sense intended — apestar most often works as an intransitive verb (algo apesta), and confusing it with contagiar/infectar (its older, now rare sense of "to infect with plague") is easy given the shared root peste.