raucous
adjective

- a raucous sound is loud, harsh, and rather unpleasant

Collins Dictionary

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WORD ORIGIN

The word “raucous” comes from the Latin raucus meaning “hoarse”, which describes the rough way someone sounds when losing their voice.

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UNNERVING SOUNDS

According to a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience, frequency sounds in the range of around 2,000 to 5,000 hertz (Hz) are unpleasant to humans. This frequency range also happens to be where our ears are most sensitive. Healthy humans can hear sound frequencies that range from 20 to 20,000 Hz. In the study, the following sounds were named as highly unpleasant:

- Fork scraping against a glass
- Chalk on a blackboard
- Nails on a blackboard
- Brakes on a cycle squealing
- Baby crying
- Electric drill

SWEET SOUNDS

Also revealed in the study were the sounds people found appealing:

- Applause
- Baby laughing
- Thunder
- Water flowing

Sources: S. Kumar, K. von Kriegstein, K. Friston, T. D. Griffiths — “Features versus Feelings: Dissociable Representations of the Acoustic Features and Valence of Aversive Sounds”, Journal of Neuroscience (2012). ScienceDaily, Newcastle University — “The worst noises in the world: Why we recoil at unpleasant sounds” (2012).

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SYNONYMS

- making or constituting a disturbingly harsh and loud noise

air-rending, atonal, blaring, braying, cacophonic, cacophonous, clamorous, clanging, clashing, creaking, croaking, deafening, dinning, discordant, disharmonic, disharmonious, dissonant, droning, ear-piercing, ear-splitting, grating, gravelly, grinding, gruff, guttural, harsh-sounding, high-pitched, hoarse, inharmonic, inharmonious, jangling, jangly, jarring, jingling, jingly, off-key, out-of-key, out-of-tune, penetrating, piercing, rackety, rasping, RAUCOUS, rough-sounding, scratchy, screaming, screeching, screechy, shrieking, shrieky, shrill, squawking, squawky, squeaking, squeaky, squealing, strident, tinny, unharmonious, unmelodic, unmelodious, whistling, yauping, yawping, yowling

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“RAUCOUS laughter from the children’s bedroom broke the ice at the beginning of our telco.”

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