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NOTORIOUS
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Known widely and usually unfavorably
Example:
the infamous Benedict Arnold
Synonyms:
ill-famed; infamous; notorious
Classified under:
Similar:
disreputable (lacking respectability in character or behavior or appearance)
Context examples:
The hunters, never more than roughly aware of the position of the ship, nevertheless knew that we were close to the boundaries of the forbidden sea, while Wolf Larsen’s record as a poacher was notorious.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
In spite of their Unitarian proclivities and their masks of conservative broadmindedness, they were two generations behind interpretative science: their mental processes were mediaeval, while their thinking on the ultimate data of existence and of the universe struck him as the same metaphysical method that was as young as the youngest race, as old as the cave-man, and older—the same that moved the first Pleistocene ape-man to fear the dark; that moved the first hasty Hebrew savage to incarnate Eve from Adam's rib; that moved Descartes to build an idealistic system of the universe out of the projections of his own puny ego; and that moved the famous British ecclesiastic to denounce evolution in satire so scathing as to win immediate applause and leave his name a notorious scrawl on the page of history.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
He then formally declared war against Pedro Lopez, the leader of the slave-drivers, enrolled a band of runaway slaves in his service, armed them, and conducted a campaign, which ended by his killing with his own hands the notorious half-breed and breaking down the system which he represented.
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
In this memorable year ’95, a curious and incongruous succession of cases had engaged his attention, ranging from his famous investigation of the sudden death of Cardinal Tosca—an inquiry which was carried out by him at the express desire of His Holiness the Pope—down to his arrest of Wilson, the notorious canary-trainer, which removed a plague-spot from the East End of London.
(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
A celebrated tenor had sung in Italian and a notorious contralto had sung in jazz and between the numbers people were doing stunts all over the garden, while happy vacuous bursts of laughter rose toward the summer sky.
(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)
