@drpaladin, you are certainly correct on that.  And to expand on the sentence @Myr gave, --

"Loud noises can irritate people who are trying to concentrate...."  I would add to that:

"Loud noises can irritate people who are trying to concentrate and make them annoyed, impatient, and eventually angry."

The word "irritate" comes from the Latin irritare, meaning to excite, provoke, or annoy.  The Latin word itself is likely derived from a Proto-Italic root rito-, related to being "stirred".  It entered English in the 1530s with the meaning of "to rouse to action," with the sense of "to annoy" or "make impatient" emerging in the 1590s. The related noun irritation came into English even earlier, in the mid-15th century, from Old French and Latin. 

The verb irritate first appeared in English in the 1530s (e.g., Thomas Elyot, 1531), however, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the the earliest recorded use was in 1605, in a work called Answ. Supposed Discov. Rom. Doctr.   The verb irrite (from French) was used from around 1450, during the Middle English period.  The meaning shifted from "stimulate" (1530s) to "annoy" (1590s).  The noun irritation was recorded in the late 1500s (around 1589), and the adjective irritated around the late 1500s (1595). 

Examples of "irritate" used in English: 
"Harsh soaps can irritate the skin." 
"The other passengers were irritated by the child's rudeness."
"It's his arrogance that really irritates me." 
"I'm not a psychic healer, I just said that to irritate my mother." 
"I hereby resolve not to let the faults of others irritate me." 
"To Neil's surprise, all this had begun to irritate Dr Barbara." 
"An interesting, sometimes alarming, sometimes irritating, sometimes frustrating book - just the thing for seminar discussion texts." 
"People are irritated with the woman for seemingly ' having given up ' and she is discussed disparagingly within the family."