" I confess I do not understand his argument; but it was
referring to this that I said that our only known process would make a
plural noun of it. I have an impression that I have met with "annoys"
used by poetical license for "annoyances."
"Noise" has never been used in the sense of the French word in this
country. If derived immediately from the French, it is hardly probable
that it should so entirely have lost every particle of its original
meaning. With us it is either _a loud sound_, or _fame, report, rumour_,
being in this sense rendered in the Latin by the same two words, _fama,
rumor_, as News. The former sense is strictly consequential to the
latter, which I believe to be the original signification, as shown in
its use in the following passages:--
"At the same time it was noised abroad in the realme"
_Holinshed_.
Cleopatra, catching but the least noise of this, dies
instantly.
_Ant. and Cleo._, Act i. Sc. 2.
_Cre_. What was his cause of anger?
_Ser_. The noise goes, this.
_Troil. and Cres._, Act. i. Sc. 2.
Whether I or your correspondents be right, will remain perhaps for ever
doubtful; but the flight that can discover a relationship between this
word and another pronounced[1] as nearly the same as the two languages
will admit of, and which gives at all events one sense, if not, as I
think, the primary one, is scarcely so eccentric as that which finds the
origin of a word signifying a loud sound, and fame, or rumor, in
"nisus"; not even _struggle_, in the sense of _contention_, an endeavour
an effort, a strain.
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