noisy
- 1Making a noise, especially a loud or unpleasant one.
Like a marching band passing right outside your window.
The noisy engine drowned out our entire conversation.
A noisy group of children burst into the quiet library.
Similarboisterous, clamorous, turbulent, vociferous
Note
Built simply from noise plus the suffix -y, the word starts here, with whatever produces the sound. It is not always a complaint. In Anatomy of the Orchestra (1981), Norman Del Mar places "the heavy, noisier instruments" of the percussion behind "the pitched, agile instruments." Here noisy describes sound without a definite pitch rather than unpleasant sound.
- 2Filled with noise, as a place or environment can be.
Like standing in the middle of a busy train station at rush hour.
The market was noisy with vendors shouting over one another.
Downtown gets noisy on weekend nights, with music spilling from every bar.
Similarloud, rowdy, raucous, deafening
Oppositequiet, peaceful, tranquil, silent
Note
Here the noise belongs to a place rather than to its source: a noisy bar, a noisy street, a noisy market. A crowd is noisy in the noise-making sense; the room it fills is noisy in this one. Hawthorne, describing a Florence market in 1871, sets noisiest beside swarmiest, and this sense often travels with crowding and bustle.
- 3Containing random fluctuations that obscure the true signal or data.
Like trying to read handwriting through a smudged, speckled page.
The sensor produced a noisy reading that masked the actual temperature trend.
Engineers cleaned up the noisy data before running their analysis.
Similarmessy, distorted, corrupted
Oppositeclean
Note
A technical metaphor in which noise means random variation rather than sound. Noisy data still contain a real pattern, but random fluctuation lowers the signal-to-noise ratio and blurs it. Nate Silver uses the word this way in 2024, calling the link between the economy and an incumbent's fortunes "positive, but noisy": the relationship is real but unreliable in any single case.
- 4Visually busy or garish, drawing unwanted attention through a cluttered or jarring appearance.
Like a room painted in five clashing colors at once.
The website's noisy layout made it hard to focus on the main message.
He wore a noisy tie covered in clashing stripes and dots.
Similarbusy, loud, garish, gaudy, cluttered
Oppositeclean, plain, understated, subtle
Note
Sound vocabulary borrowed for the eye: noisy clothes, a noisy pattern, a noisy page. What carries over from the sense of making noise is unwanted intrusion, since the design demands attention it has not earned. It is a criticism, not a neutral description. Calling a tie or a layout noisy says it is too busy, not merely bright.
Practice
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Origin
Formed from "noise" combined with the suffix "-y".