Notorious

How to spell notorious

9 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce notorious

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does notorious mean?

1. adjectiveFamous or widely known for something bad or unfavourable.

Notorious in a sentence

• The company became notorious for hidden fees on its contracts.

• That stretch of motorway is notorious for heavy traffic every morning.

Where does notorious come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the medieval Latin notorius, meaning 'well known' or 'publicly recognised', which was built on the Latin verb noscere, 'to know', and its past participle notus, 'known'. When notorious first entered English in the early 1500s it was largely neutral, describing anything that was widely or generally known. Over time the word drifted decisively toward the negative, so that by the seventeenth century it almost always meant famous for something bad. The same Latin root for knowing survives in everyday relatives such as 'note', 'notice', and 'notable', all of which trace back to the idea of being marked or recognised. The spelling trap lies in the ending: it is -orious, not -orius, and the single 't' is easy to forget after the familiar word 'not'.

How the word is built

• not- (from Latin notus: known)
• -orious (adjective suffix meaning 'characterised by')