Ya Know?

I am not famous. I’m not even infamous. If you think in terms of the two words, you won’t conflate fame with infamy. Fame is “the state of being well-known or talked about; renown.” Not that you didn’t know that. Its definition uses renown as a synonym, which always leads me to ask why we have two words for the same thing.


Renown is defined as “great fame or reputation; celebrity.” It originally was a superlative word for fame. I’ve tried to spell it reknown, but its etymology belies that spelling. It came to English in about 1300 from Anglo-French (my dictionary says Middle English then Anglo-French, but they’re conducing the verb used in Middle English to the noun form), where the word is renoun. In Old French it was renom, a form of renommer, which means to name again and is formed from the Latin prefix re- (meaning the same as our prefix re-) and nominare or nomen, which means name.

Fame also came to English in about 1300 from the Old French, based on the Latin word fama, which means “talk, rumor, or reputation.”

But there is a difference between renown and infamy.

Infamy has a very negative connotation. It is the opposite of fame (hence the in- prefix – see Dec. 26, 2009 blog). To say someone is “infamous” for a good thing is the wrong use of the word. It may seem to be a superlative, but it’s not – renowned is the word you’re looking for. My dictionary defines infamy as “very bad reputation, disgrace, dishonor, notoriety.”

So on a spectrum of being well-known, with bad reputation being first, the words would be: infamy, fame, renown. In common usage, renown and fame no longer have the relationship defined above. They are now more commonly used with renown referring to someone who has become known for a positive contribution to society, whereas fame is attached to celebrity, where the reputation is based merely on public awareness of the individual.

(I’ve used two words in the above portion of today’s blog that I have previously addressed: conflate and conduce. They are also sometimes misused. I explained these words in my June 9 blog.)

It was Andy Warhol who is quoted as saying “In the future, everybody will be world famous for 15 minutes.” The quote became so tied to him that he later tried to change it to “In 15 minutes everybody will be famous.”

It is the different shades of words that provide for me the color to language that is equivalent to the shades an artist gives to a painting. Whether or not that applies to Andy Warhol is for you to determine, but accuracy of use provides better clarity to the final image.