annoy
Pronunciation
  • IPA: /əˈnɔɪ/
Verb

annoy (annoys, present participle annoying; past and past participle annoyed)

  1. (transitive) To disturb or irritate, especially by continued or repeated acts; to bother with unpleasant deeds.
    • Say, what can more our tortured souls annoy / Than to behold, admire, and lose our joy?
    Marc loved his sister, but when she annoyed him he wanted to switch her off.
  2. (intransitive) To do something to upset or anger someone; to be troublesome.
  3. (transitive) To molest; to harm; to injure.
    to annoy an army by impeding its march, or by a cannonade
    • tapers put into lanterns or sconces of several-coloured, oiled paper, that the wind might not annoy them
Synonyms Antonyms Related terms Translations Translations Translations Noun

annoy (plural annoys)

  1. (now rare, literary) A feeling of discomfort or vexation caused by what one dislikes.
    • 1532 (first printing), Geoffrey Chaucer, The Romaunt of the Rose:
      I merveyle me wonder faste / How ony man may lyve or laste / In such peyne and such brennyng, / [...] In such annoy contynuely.
    • c. 1610, John Fletcher, “Sleep” ↗:
      We that suffer long annoy / Are contented with a thought / Through an idle fancy wrought: / O let my joys have some abiding!
  2. (now rare, literary) That which causes such a feeling.
    • 1594, William Shakespeare, King Rchard III, IV.2:
      Sleepe in Peace, and wake in Ioy, / Good Angels guard thee from the Boares annoy [...].
    • 1872, Robert Browning, "Fifine at the Fair, V:
      The home far and away, the distance where lives joy, / The cure, at once and ever, of world and world's annoy [...].
Synonyms


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