Notoriety

How to spell notoriety

9 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce notoriety

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does notoriety mean?

1. nounThe state of being widely known, usually for something bad or scandalous.

Notoriety in a sentence

• The fraud case gave the accountant lasting notoriety in the local press.

• His notoriety for missed deadlines followed him from one agency to the next.

Where does notoriety come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Notoriety travels back to the Latin verb noscere, meaning 'to know', whose past participle notus meant simply 'known'. From this came the Late Latin adjective notorius, 'well known' or 'publicly recognised', and in turn the Medieval Latin noun notorietas, the state of being widely known. English borrowed the word around the late 1500s, by way of French notoriete, and at first it carried no judgement at all: notoriety just meant the condition of being a matter of public knowledge. Over the following centuries the sense soured, so that today it almost always implies fame for the wrong reasons, a reputation built on scandal or misdeeds. The same notus root quietly survives in everyday relatives such as 'notable', 'notify' and 'note', and remembering that family helps fix the tricky tail of the word: it is spelled -iety, mirroring 'variety' and 'sobriety', not the -ity you might expect.

How the word is built

• notori- (from Latin notorius: well known)
• -ety (noun-forming suffix denoting a state or quality)