DictionaryAI

annoy

uh-NOY/əˈnɔɪ/

Formsannoys, annoying, annoyed

5 meanings of annoy

Practice

  1. 1
    verbtransitive
    To disturb or irritate someone, especially through repeated or continued actions.

    Constant interruptions annoy her more than the workload itself.

    He kept tapping his pen to annoy his coworkers during the meeting.

    Similarbother, irritate

    Oppositeplease

    Note

    The everyday verb, and the one that keeps the Latin root in view: Late Latin inodiāre, "to make loathsome," built on odium, "hatred." Through Old French it displaced the native Old English dreċċan and gremman. It takes a direct object, as in Pope's Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot (1735), where a bug's buzz "the witty and the fair annoys." Bother and irritate stand beside it, and its plain opposite is please.

  2. 2
    verbintransitive
    To behave in a way that upsets or angers people, or to be a source of trouble.

    Certain mannerisms annoy no matter how well-meaning the person is.

    The constant background hum annoys after only a few minutes.

    Similarirritate, grate, rankle, jar

    Oppositeplease, soothe

  3. 3
    verbarchaictransitive
    To harm, injure, or molest; to inflict damage on a person or thing.

    The garrison sortied at dawn to annoy the besieging army.

    Say, what can more our tortured souls annoy / Than to behold, admire, and lose our joy?
    1691, Matthew Prior, Pastoral to Dr. Turner

    Similarharm, hurt, injure, wound, damage

    Note

    Older and harsher than the modern verb, this use means doing real damage, closer to wound than to irritate. An army is annoyed by a cannonade, and John Evelyn's lanterns of oiled paper kept the wind from annoying the tapers inside. In older prose, resist softening it to the everyday "irritate" sense. In current writing it is archaic, best kept for period settings.

Less common meanings

  1. 4
    nounarchaic
    Irritation or unease felt because of something one finds disagreeable.

    A faint annoy crossed his face at the interruption.

    [I]f she says he was defeated, why he had better, a great deal, have been defeated, than give her a moment's annoy.
    1870, Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Success”
    Note

    The noun has its own history, separate from the verb's: Middle English anoy, from Old French enui, which makes it a doublet of ennui. Archaic and literary, it names the feeling and can stand without an article: "long anoy" in Beaumont and Fletcher's The Woman Hater (1606), "a moment's annoy" in Emerson as late as 1870. Today it reads as deliberate period style.

  2. 5
    nounarchaic
    Something that causes a feeling of vexation or discomfort.

    The flickering lamp was a persistent annoy through the evening.

    Every creak of the old house became an annoy to the sleepless traveler.

    Note

    A poet's noun, valued for its rhyme with joy. In Shakespeare's Richard the Third, a blessing asks that good angels guard the sleeper "from the Boar's annoy." Browning's Fifine at the Fair (1872) sets joy against "world's annoy." It shares its origin with the noun for the feeling. Outside verse or conscious pastiche it sounds archaic.

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Origins

Meanings 1–3

From Middle English anoyen, from Old French anoier ("to bother, disturb"), from Late Latin inodiāre ("to make loathsome"), which came from Latin odium ("loathing, hatred").

Meanings 4–5

From Middle English anoy, from Old French enui, making it a doublet of ennui.