Noisome

WORD OF THE DAY

noisome / adjective / NOY-sum

Definition

1: noxious, harmful

2a: offensive to the senses and especially to the sense of smell

2b: highly obnoxious or objectionable

Examples

"The streets were narrow and very dirty, the air smoky and noisome, the people mostly wretched." 

— Ken Follett, The Man From St. Petersburg, 1982

"The last two newspaper offices where I worked were based in not-so-safe or particularly pretty areas of a city, and most nights when I left work I had to breathe in the noisomearomas of swamp gas, paper mill, deteriorating sewer lines and a dog food processing plant…." 

— Jackie Torok, The Brunswick Beacon (Shallotte, North Carolina), 27 May 2014

Did You Know?

Noisome sounds like it might be a synonym of noisy, but it's not. Something noisome is disgusting, offensive, or harmful, often in its smell. Noisome does not come from noise, but from the Middle English word noysome, which has the same meaning as noisome. 

Noysome was formed by combining the noun noy, which means "annoyance," with the adjectival suffix -some ("characterized by a (specified) thing, quality, state, or action"). 

Noy comes from Anglo-French anui, which also means "annoyance." As you may have already guessed, the English words annoy and annoyance are also related to noisome.