"Noise" has never been used in the sense of the French word in this country. If derived immediately from the French, it is hardly probable that it should so entirely have lost every particle of its original meaning. With us it is either a loud sound, or fame, report, rumour, being in this sense rendered in the Latin by the same two words, fama, rumor, as News. The former sense is strictly consequential to the latter, which I believe to be the original signification, as shown in its use in the following passages:—
"At the same time it was noised abroad in the realme"
Holinshed.
Cleopatra, catching but the least noise of this, dies
instantly.
Ant. and Cleo., Act i. Sc. 2.
Cre. What was his cause of anger?
Ser. The noise goes, this.
Troil. and Cres., Act. i. Sc. 2.
Whether I or your correspondents be right, will remain perhaps for ever doubtful; but the flight that can discover a relationship between this word and another pronounced[1] as nearly the same as the two languages will admit of, and which gives at all events one sense, if not, as I think, the primary one, is scarcely so eccentric as that which finds the origin of a word signifying a loud sound, and fame, or rumor, in "nisus"; not even struggle, in the sense of contention, an endeavour an effort, a strain.