Obnoxious

How to spell obnoxious

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce obnoxious

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does obnoxious mean?

1. adjectiveExtremely unpleasant or offensive, especially in a way that irritates others.

Obnoxious in a sentence

• The new manager has an obnoxious habit of interrupting everyone in meetings.

• Diners complained about the obnoxious behaviour of the group at the next table.

Where does obnoxious come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin obnoxiosus, an adjective built on obnoxius, which meant 'exposed to harm', 'liable', or 'subject to punishment'. That word combined ob, meaning 'toward' or 'against', with noxa, the Latin noun for 'harm' or 'injury' (the same root that gives us 'noxious' and 'innocuous'). When English adopted it in the late 1500s, it first carried that older legal sense of being liable or vulnerable to something, as in being obnoxious to criticism. Over the 1600s and 1700s the meaning drifted toward 'offensive' and 'highly objectionable', which is the only sense most people use today. The buried noxa root is a handy spelling cue: the tricky middle is spelled like 'noxious', with that x doing the work, and the ending is -ious, not -ius.

How the word is built

• ob- (toward, against)
• nox/noxi (from Latin noxa: harm, injury)
• -ous (full of, adjective suffix)