What Is Noise?

Other languages handle noise a bit less vaguely. In French, the most common term is bruit, which comes from the Latin for “roar.” That’s a straightforward description of what a noise sounds like, as opposed to a subjective assessment of how it might upset us. In German, Lärm tends to indicate louder noises, Geräusch softer, more natural ones. Russians have a range of words, including shum, which, according to Vladimir Nabokov, suggests “more of a swoosh than a racket.” When Osip Mandelstam wrote of shum vremeni—“the noise of time”—he captured an essential texture of modern life.