noisome • \ˈnȯi-səm\ • adjective
1. causing or able to cause nausea
2. offensively malodorous
The word noisome has appeared in two New York Times articles in the past year, including on Jan. 12 in the Opinionator column “No Exit for Greece” by Josef Joffe:
HAMBURG, Germany — Another Chapter 11 for Greece, the third in five years — and no exit in sight. The Greeks won’t do the eurozone the favor of absconding from the common currency. Never mind that they should never have been accepted in the first place, when they cooked the books to look prim and proper.
… Crazy the game is not. The Greeks have been saved twice: in 2010, with 110 billion euros ($147 billion), and in 2012, with 130 billion euros ($173 billion). In 2011, private investors had to take a 50 percent write-down on their holdings of Greek government debt. These bailouts have created their own expectations in Greece.
Monetary war is a bit like nuclear war in this respect: Everyone knows how to start one, but nobody knows how it will end. A Grexit might get rid of a noisome neighbor, but it might also bring down the whole house of the euro.
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