notoriety

Etymology

It is partly borrowed from Anglo-Norman notoritee, also notoritie, and Middle French notoriété,^[2] and partly directly borrowed from Medieval Latin notōrietās (“the state of being well known”),^[2][3][4][5] which British sources use from 1280.^[2] The Latin noun is formed from nōtōrius (“well-known”) (see notorious),^[3][6][2] from Latin nōtus (“known”), the past participle of nōscō (“to come to know”),^[3][7] from Proto-Indo-European *gnō- (“to know”).^[3][7] The French word is recorded from 1404.^[2] The OED compares Spanish notoriedad, Italian notorietà and Portuguese notoriedade.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

The state of being widely known, especially for something bad: 1564, in the register of the Christian congregation of St Andrews, in Scotland.^[2] Etymonline dates the word to the 1590s,^[3] Dictionary.com to 1585–95,^[5] and Merriam-Webster's earliest date for its first sense is about 1650.^[8]

Semantic evolution

The word followed notorious, which in Medieval Latin meant simply "well known".^[3][7] Johnson (1755) still defined it neutrally as "publick knowledge; publick exposure",^[9] and Merriam-Webster keeps the sense of something being generally known ("a fact of such notoriety").^[8] The unfavourable sense came to dominate, so that the American Heritage Dictionary glosses it as ill fame.^[7][3] About 1650 it was also used of a notorious thing or act,^[2] and in 1841 Carlyle applied it to a notorious person.^[2][6]

Timeline

• 1564 – the state of being widely known, especially for something bad.^[2][4]
• c. 1650 – a notorious thing, event or act.^[2]
• 1841 – a notorious person, in Carlyle.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. The state of being widely known for something bad; infamy or ill fame: The band gained notoriety for wrecking hotel rooms.^[7][2][8]
2. The state of being publicly known or the object of general attention, not necessarily unfavourable.^[8][9][2]
3. A notorious person.^[2][6]

Related words

• notorious
• notice
• notion
• notify
• know

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
6. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
7. ^ a b c d e The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
8. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
9. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.