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obnoxious

UK/əbˈnɒkʃəs/US/əbˈnɑkʃəs/
adjectiveB2Common in everyday speech and writing · #4,439 of 15,258leans spoken

Obnoxious means so loud and unpleasant that everyone is annoyed. An obnoxious man, obnoxious behaviour, utterly obnoxious.

It is a strong criticism of a person rather than an act, and it implies the offence is deliberate or at least careless. It is commoner in American English than British. Note that the word once meant vulnerable or exposed to harm — obnoxious to injury — which is the opposite direction entirely, and that older sense is now dead outside legal writing.

Definitions of obnoxious

  1. 1adjectiveobnoxiousSo loud and unpleasant that everyone is annoyed.B2

    “An obnoxious man on the train shouted into his phone for the whole journey.”

    synonyms: offensive, objectionable

obnoxious is a quality of offensiveness.

Where it comes from

  1. Latin

    obnoxiōsus

  2. English, today

    obnoxious

Learned borrowing from Latin obnoxiōsus.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Sharper Adjectives

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