Noisy

How to spell noisy

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce noisy

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does noisy mean?

1. adjectiveMaking or full of a lot of loud or unpleasant sound.

Noisy in a sentence

• The noisy café made it hard to hear the phone call.

• Their new neighbours turned out to be surprisingly noisy.

Where does noisy come from?

Language of origin: French

Noisy is simply the noun 'noise' plus the adjective ending '-y', so it literally means 'full of noise'. The base word 'noise' came into English in the 1200s from Old French 'noise', which meant a quarrel, an uproar, or a din. The French word is usually traced back to the Latin 'nausea', meaning seasickness or disgust, the same root that gives us the modern word 'nausea'; the link is thought to run from the racket and distress of a rough sea voyage to the general idea of loud commotion. The '-y' suffix is a native Germanic ending used to form adjectives meaning 'characterised by', as in 'dirty' or 'lucky'. A small spelling trap is that 'noise' ends in a silent 'e', which is dropped before the '-y' is added, giving 'noisy' rather than 'noisey'.

How the word is built

• nois- (from noise)
• -y (adjective suffix: full of)