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Noisome looks and sounds like a close relation of noisy, but it’s not. While noisy describes what is excessively loud, noisome typically describes what is excessively stinky. (It is also used to describe things offensive to the senses generally, as well as things that are highly obnoxious, objectionable, or simply harmful.) Noisome comes from the synonymous Middle English noysome, which combines the suffix -some, meaning “characterized by a specified thing,” and the noun noy, meaning “annoyance.” Noisy, incidentally, comes ultimately from Latin nausea, meaning “nausea.”
Examples of noisome in a Sentence
Sun Sentinel Editorial Board, Sun Sentinel, 13 May 2025
To question the sincerity of the president’s rhetoric—and that of his party—is not to dismiss the challenge posed by the various noisome currents of antidemocratic sentiment and behavior running through our politics like the effluence of overflowing sewers.
—Gerard Baker, WSJ, 7 Nov. 2022
Performers like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, who long ago bartered their integrity and believability for money and ratings, can peddle their noisome pro-Trump propaganda on Fox News.
—Los Angeles Times, 10 June 2022
But Trudeau is using it to get rid of a political headache: the loud, noisome, but nonviolent blockade of bridges in Canada and the downtown of the nation’s capital.
—Michael Brendan Dougherty, National Review, 16 Feb. 2022
But her water bowl is filled with a noisome black, brackish liquid — what has fouled it, and for how long, is anyone’s guess.
—Gene Weingarten, Washington Post, 8 Nov. 2021
And there were some years where his fame was turned infamous by serious accusations of the most noisome acts.
—Ashley Cullins, Billboard, 3 May 2021
Auschwitz was his laboratory, offering limitless subjects and unbound by noisome ethical inhibitions.
—David Margolick, WSJ, 24 Jan. 2020
Farmers agreed to reduce the emissions of the country’s noisome pigs.
—The Economist, 9 July 2019
Cite this Entry
“Noisome.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/noisome. Accessed 13 Jul. 2025.
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noisome
adjective
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