I can only imagine that when language was developing, there weren’t many people who were well known for doing bad things, whereas SOME people may have been talked about and widely known by being good. Once the language was more or less set (or at least it was too late to develop brand new words), there were enough bad people to talk about.
But also, if someone isn’t famous you don’t need a word for them. If you’re talking about them, they’ve clearly done something to be talked about and are therefore famous. If you’re not talking about them, you don’t need to ascribe a word to them.
Got this wrong on a vocabulary test in high school and never forgot it. ‘In-‘ has multiple meanings depending on its Latin roots. It’s like how flammable and inflammable mean the same thing. English just loves to mess with our heads.
interestingly enough, it’s a similar case in Polish – sławny vs niesławny, the latter meaning not unpopular but having a bad reputation. There’s also osławiony, which is similar but more specific, it means having a bad reputation based on a specific thing that someone has done.
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The Latin root word – “fama” is more like “reputation” than the English “fame”, which is used to essentially just mean “well known”.
So “Infamous” – “not-famous” – means “not reputable”, or “having a bad reputation”.
From the Latin “infamis” meaning of Ill fame. The word fama means reputation. Overall the world means of a bad reputation.
Ask el guapo he is the only person I know who is infamous.
Infamous is connected to ‘infamy’ which means being known for bad qualities/deeds.
Because it can also refer to bad in Latin
I can only imagine that when language was developing, there weren’t many people who were well known for doing bad things, whereas SOME people may have been talked about and widely known by being good. Once the language was more or less set (or at least it was too late to develop brand new words), there were enough bad people to talk about.
But also, if someone isn’t famous you don’t need a word for them. If you’re talking about them, they’ve clearly done something to be talked about and are therefore famous. If you’re not talking about them, you don’t need to ascribe a word to them.
Or as Kenneth Williams once said in Carry on Cleo, “Infamy! Infamy! They’ve all got it in for me!”
Infamy infamy, they’ve all got it in for me
No one tell them about ‘inflammable’!
That is exactly what it means. Not famous to a fault, as in famous for being deplorable.
Got this wrong on a vocabulary test in high school and never forgot it. ‘In-‘ has multiple meanings depending on its Latin roots. It’s like how flammable and inflammable mean the same thing. English just loves to mess with our heads.
I don’t wanna admit how long I read infamous as im-famous 😭2
interestingly enough, it’s a similar case in Polish – sławny vs niesławny, the latter meaning not unpopular but having a bad reputation. There’s also osławiony, which is similar but more specific, it means having a bad reputation based on a specific thing that someone has done.
Also inflammable doesn’t mean not flammable
Include
involve
inject
inscribe