Unwanted sound. The Oxford English Dictionary contains references to noise as unwanted sound dating back as far as 1225. Unmusical sound. The nineteenth-century physicist Hermann Helmholtz employed the expression noise to describe sound composed of nonperiodic vibrations (the rustling of leaves), by comparison with musical sounds, which consist of periodic vibrations. Noise is still used in this sense in expressions such as “white noise” or “Gaussian noise." Any loud sound. In general usage today, noise often refers to particularly loud sounds. In this sense a noise abatement by-law prohibits
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