nuisance: [15] Nuisance has become much less serious over the centuries. When English originally acquired it, it meant ‘harm, injury’ (‘Helpe me to weye ageyn the feend … keepe vs from his nusance’, Thomas Hoccleve, Mother of God 1410), reflecting its origins in Latin nocēre ‘injure’ (source also of English innocent and innocuous). But gradually it softened to ‘troublesomeness’, and by the early 19th century it had acquired its present-day connotations of ‘petty annoyance’.
nuisance (n.)
c. 1400, "injury, hurt, harm," from Anglo-French nusaunce, Old French nuisance "harm, wrong, damage," from past participle stem of nuire "to harm," from Latin nocere "to hurt" (see noxious). Sense has softened over time, to "anything obnoxious to a community" (bad smells, pests, eyesores), 1660s, then "source of annoyance, something personally disagreeable" (1831). Applied to persons from 1690s.
双语例句
1. He spent three days making an absolute nuisance of himself.
他3天时间就把自己变成了个地地道道的“讨人嫌”。
来自柯林斯例句
2. Back in the 1980s drug users were a public nuisance in Zurich.
在20世纪80年代，吸毒者在苏黎世是被众人所唾弃的。
来自柯林斯例句
3. It's a blooming nuisance because it frightens my dog to death.