Noisome

Noisome is an adjective that means having an extremely offensive smell. Our word of the day has nothing at all to do with sound coming into our ears, but rather it relates to smell coming into our nasal cavities. It combines the Middle English word ‘noy,’ which is a shortened form of ‘annoy’ along with the suffix S-O-M-E, which means ‘characterized by being.’ All that perfume in the department store I worked in became noisome after a while. The scent was nice for a few days, but it became distasteful in a matter of weeks.