obnoxious
/əbˈnɒkʃəs
/adjective
Extremely unpleasant: obnoxious odours he found her son somewhat obnoxious...
- I assume he was not aware of the fact that he was in a church and being extremely obnoxious.
- More than just unpleasant, the obnoxious smell was stifling and suffocating.
- Like a nasty fungus or a obnoxious flatmate, the government will expand to fill any available space.
Derivatives
obnoxiously
/ adverb ...- Josh is obnoxiously ambitious, but he's so plagued with chronic insecurity and low self-esteem it's virtually impossible to hate him.
- Try not to get obnoxiously and tactlessly drunk.
- The ruling class is obnoxiously greedy, despoiling our planet and exploiting the people on it with a few bare restraints provided by popular pressure over the last century.
obnoxiousness
/ noun ...- I am outraged at the degree of obnoxiousness with which they are treating shareholders.
- There's general rudeness and then there is obnoxiousness.
- As we have no TV, we've been continually targeted by the TV Licensing Authority with a series of letters of increasing obnoxiousness.
Origin
Late 16th century (in the sense 'vulnerable to harm'): from Latin obnoxiosus, from obnoxius 'exposed to harm', from ob- 'towards' + noxa 'harm'. The current sense, influenced by noxious, dates from the late 17th century.
innocent from Middle English:
Literally meaning ‘not harming’, innocent goes back to Latin in- ‘not’ and nocere ‘to hurt, injure’, which also lies behind nuisance (Late Middle English), noxious (Late Middle English) ‘harmful’, its opposite innocuous (late 16th century), and obnoxious (late 16th century).