My special exception to the rule of notoriety being negative is this fabulous woman. (The noun form notoriety came around in the 1590s and was officially meant as “the state of being unfavorably known.”) Lo and behold, notoriety is now something you’d prefer to avoid. ![]() ![]() The worse it is, the more people are going to hear about it!Įnough people got known for doing naughty things that the word notorious was more often than not paired with something negative, and so it adopted that common usage into it’s meaning (connotation!! I love it!!). As we know, bad news travels faster than good right? It’s the old theory that someone will tell one person about a good experience with a business, but will tell ten people about a bad experience. Since the 17th century it’s been largely associated with bad things. Okay, well, now if you’re notorious that’s not a great thing for your reputation. “noted for some bad practice or quality, notable in a bad sense, widely but discreditably known” So originally, yes! You could be a medieval dad who was notorious for making the best bread around! But now… From there, it went to notus, meaning “known”, and then on to Medieval Latin’s notorius meaning “commonly known.” The Latin noscere (come to know) is the root of this one. But… could you be the single dad notorious for contributing to every bake sale for his kid’s class? You could be the mafia boss notorious for creative smashings of knees. You could be the office worker notorious for reheating fish in the communal microwave. Now: low-key famous for something bad or negative (a personality trait, an action, etc) Then: publicly known or spoken about well known Just enough to be… interesting.īut has it always meant that? Was being notorious once a good thing? Or have villains and playboys been notorious for all time? Origins of “notorious” It’s just a tiny bit dangerous, but probably not so much as to be truly perilous. It feels salacious and darkly intriguing and bad-boy-ish. Words pick up new meanings, and sometimes are made into completely opposite or entirely different meanings than where they began. Connotation shapes our language so much, and in such a natural way that you’d rarely even realize it was happening. ![]() Connotation is one of my favorite things about language.
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