noia

Forms

noia f (plural noie)^[1] Old forms include Old Italian noi (13th century) and Old Italian noglia, recorded at Bologna.^[2] The GDLI also lists the old forms nòlia and nùia.^[3]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Old Occitan enoja (“vexation, annoyance”) or its shorter form noja, a noun formed from the verb enojar (“to annoy”).^{[4][5][6][2][1]} Wiktionary and the Treccani dictionary give the Occitan source as probable rather than certain.^[1][7] The Occitan verb continues Late Latin inodiō (“to make hateful”), formed from a Latin expression meaning “to hold in hatred”, with Latin odium (“hatred”).^[4][8][9][1]

DELI places the word among the terms of courtly love that Italian poetry took from the troubadours, beside gioia, drudo and sollazzo.^[4] Meyer-Lübke instead listed the Italian noun as formed from the verb annoiare.^[10] He took Old French enui and enuei as the continuations of the Latin phrase itself.^[10]

Related nouns are French ennui, Spanish enojo and Portuguese nojo.^[1][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

The first record is in Patecchio in the 12th century.^[4][3] His line Grand noia me fai pegro scudero (“A lazy squire gives me great annoyance”) shows the old sense of vexation and displeasure.^[3]

Semantic evolution

In Old Italian noia was a strong word for pain, distress and vexation.^[3][1] Dante's Ma tu perché ritorni a tanta noia? (“But why do you return to such distress?”) is the standard example of the old sense “anguish, sorrow”.^[6][9][11] The sense of weariness caused by idleness, monotony or lack of interest grew alongside it and is now the main one.^[4][6]

Leopardi made noia a central idea of his thought, the painful sense of the vanity of life: La noia è in qualche modo il più sublime dei sentimenti umani (“Boredom is in a way the most sublime of human feelings”).^[8][7] Existentialist philosophy gave the word a further technical meaning.^[6][7] The concrete sense “nuisance, bother” was recorded by Tommaseo–Bellini in 1869, and in the plural noie now also names mechanical faults.^[4][6][11]

The derivative noioso is as old as the noun, and is itself taken from Occitan enojos.^[4][5] English borrowed noia in psychology in 1944.^[12]

Timeline

• 1100s – Patecchio uses noia.^[4][3]
• 1100s – Noioso is first recorded, also in Patecchio.^[4]
• 1200s – Old noi “affliction” and Bolognese noglia are recorded.^[2]
• 1620–1639 – Fioretti uses noiosità.^[4]
• 1869 – Tommaseo–Bellini record the sense “nuisance, bother”.^[4]
• 1944 – English noia is first recorded.^[12]

Meanings

Noun

1. boredom, tedium: dissatisfaction and weariness caused by monotony, idleness or lack of interest: sbadigliava di noia.^[6][8][9][1]
2. Bother, annoyance, trouble: il rumore mi dà noia.^{[6][9][13][1]}
3. (usually plural) A fault in a machine or engine.^[6][11]
4. A person or thing that bores or annoys, a bore: quella conferenza è stata una noia.^{[6][9][13][1]}
5. (literary) The painful sense of the vanity of life, existential ennui.^[6][8][11]
6. (philosophy) In existentialism, indifference to all things and a sense of the gratuitousness of human existence.^[6]
7. (obsolete) Pain, sorrow, anguish.^[6][9][1]
8. (literature) A medieval poem listing things the poet finds irksome, the enueg.^[6][9]

Word family

• noioso
• noiosità

Related words

• odio
• Old Occitan enoja
• French ennui
• Latin odium

Usage notes

Common phrases are avere a noia “to find tiresome”, venire a noia “to become tiresome”, dare noia “to bother”, ammazzare la noia “to kill time” and fino alla noia “over and over”.^{[6][8][13][11]} Zingarelli sets noia beside tedio, a deeper and more oppressive boredom, and uggia, boredom mixed with irritation and gloom.^[13]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c Battisti, Carlo; Alessio, Giovanni (1950–1957), Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols., Firenze: Barbèra (reprint 1975), p. 2594
3. ^ a b c d e Battaglia, Salvatore; Bàrberi Squarotti, Giorgio (1961–2002), Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 21 vols., Torino: UTET; digital ed. Accademia della Crusca
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Cortelazzo, Manlio; Zolli, Paolo (1999), Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 2nd ed. by Manlio Cortelazzo and Michele A. Cortelazzo, Bologna: Zanichelli
5. ^ a b c Nocentini, Alberto; Parenti, Alessandro (2010), l'Etimologico: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Firenze: Le Monnier
6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n De Mauro, Tullio (ed.) (2003), Grande dizionario italiano dell'uso, CD-ROM version 2.0, Torino: UTET
7. ^ a b c Duro, Aldo (ed.) (1986–1994), Vocabolario della lingua italiana, Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana; online ed. treccani.it/vocabolario (2008 copy)
8. ^ a b c d e Devoto, Giacomo; Oli, Gian Carlo; Serianni, Luca; Trifone, Maurizio (2026), Nuovo Devoto–Oli: il vocabolario dell'italiano contemporaneo, digital ed., Milano: Le Monnier
9. ^ a b c d e f g Sabatini, Francesco; Coletti, Vittorio; Manfredini, Manuela (2026), Dizionario italiano Sabatini Coletti, digital ed., Milano: Sansoni / Rizzoli Larousse
10. ^ a b Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
11. ^ a b c d e Vocabolario della lingua italiana Treccani (2011), Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana
12. ^ a b Stammerjohann, Harro, et al. (2008), Dizionario di italianismi in francese, inglese, tedesco, Firenze: Accademia della Crusca; online at difit.italianisticaonline.it
13. ^ a b c d Zingarelli, Nicola (2009), Lo Zingarelli 2010: vocabolario della lingua italiana, Bologna: Zanichelli