Other forms: annoyed, annoying, annoys
To annoy somebody is to bother them until they lose patience. Small, repeated, and eventually too much.
The word is about accumulation rather than a single blow, which is why a dripping tap annoys and a disaster does not. It is milder than anger and firmer than bother. The adjective annoying describes the cause, and annoyed describes the person, which is a distinction learners find useful. The noun annoyance can mean the feeling or the thing causing it, so a minor annoyance is the irritant itself.
1verbannoyTo make someone mildly angry or impatient.
“It annoyed him that nobody had asked.”
Middle English
anoyen
English, today
annoy
From Middle English anoyen. From Middle English anoyen, from Old French enoiier (“to bother, disturb”), from Latin inodio (“to make loathsome”), derived from Latin odium (“loathing, hatred”). Displaced native dreċċan, gremman.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA