Today we’ll talk about a word that is rarely used, but at the same time causes some interest from the public. The adjective “notorious” is our object of study.
Value
With the meaning of this term, not everything is as clear as we would like. Until the twentieth century, this word was good and meant “famous, famous, glorious,” but now it has changed its tone to polar and also means glory, but of a dubious sense. Why it happened is a mystery, but nothing lasts forever, including the meaning of words. So, let’s summarize two values in a numbered list solely for the convenience of the reader:
- Famous, famous, glorious (outdated at the moment).
- Widely known, sensational.
In the second sense, tonality is rather disapproving. Although, as Fellini remarked: "Talk bad about me, speak good about me, most importantly - talk about me." Moreover, this is true for a time when almost any fame can be monetized.
Do you have an idea? Launch the YouTube channel and you will be offered money for advertising, of course, only if the channel collects a sufficient number of public. In short, as in Okudzhava’s famous song: “No salary, no work.” Now, I think, many dream of the adjective "notorious" (this is surprising, but true). As a characteristic, this means that a person is so famous that there is nowhere to go.
In general, if you rephrase the famous Roman emperor, then the glory does not smell.
Synonyms
Replacements always help us out. This is especially true when the words are either outdated or those that are rarely used in everyday life. And the notorious one is an adjective that you rarely find in both oral and written speech. So here is the list:
- famous;
- famous;
- vaunted;
- notorious;
- notorious.
As you can see, the word can be both bad and good. But in the modern language situation it is used, rather, in a negative context. Let the reader remember this. In turn, synonyms for the “notorious” will help him fully understand the meaning of the word and make it part of his active dictionary.
Victor Pelevin - the same notorious writer
Philology students, as a rule, do not like Pelevin, considering him to be a marketer rather than a writer. And the thing is that he is fantastically successful. The artist, according to future literary scholars, should be poor, hungry and notorious only after death, for example, as Harms or Kafka. But Viktor Olegovich does not want to. Rather, he simply does not succeed. Almost any of his books, just appeared on sale, immediately disappears from it. What to do, his creations have a demand in the market.
Therefore, our epoch-making, cult writer synthesizes two meanings of the “notorious” in his image at once: on the one hand, he is famous, illustrious, and on the other, notorious.
To attract the interest of the masses, you need to saturate your image and works with the spirit of scandal or to be 100% in the mainstream, such as Prilepin. Although Pelevin manages to combine all this. He knows very well the world in which he creates. He analyzes the mythology of modern society, and quite successfully (see the novel “Generation“ P ””). But the quality of prose cannot but be affected by certain contractual, apparently, frameworks on which the writer depends on him. Therefore, the farther, the more uneven becomes the product that Pelevin gives out on the mountain.
Notorious musicians and writers
“Notorious” is the adjective that interests us today, and if so, then one cannot help but recall the various artists. Their reputation has programmed the perception of society and the broad masses of the creative intelligentsia in a certain way. For instance:
- Rock musicians are all drug addicts and potential suicides.
- Artists are people of a subtle soulful organization, prone to drug addiction and madness.
- Writers are closed intellectuals, usually in poor physical shape, but not necessarily.
In this case, we will not say that the three stamps above have nothing to do with reality. The first cliche is confirmed by the fate of too many musicians in the twentieth century, such as Kurt Cobain.
Actors, in principle, can also commit suicide based on insanity. Of the last cases that I particularly remember were the deaths of Heath Ledger in 2008 and Philip Seymour Hoffman in 2014.
The third stamp is the only one to which it is difficult to find an example. At least find it in modern reality. In the twentieth century, the West lived quite quietly, for example, Hermann Hesse. The USSR had its own creative party, but, say, Bulat Okudzhava always kept his distance between himself and the world, even when he participated in meetings, he was an introverted person.
Now, in many ways, the world has changed. Now it’s hard to make money only with books (in Russia, for sure). For books to be bought, writers must know it must be presented in the media space. The only one who manages to be absent from the party process, but at the same time sell well, is Pelevin. Maybe he is not the only one, the reader is always entitled to correct us, we will not mind.
The main thing is that both the cliches and the people we are talking about illustrate the meaning of the word “notorious”.
Fame is not always good
The stamps given above tell us that fame is a dangerous and insidious thing, especially if it combines with scandal. I recall the case of the notorious Harry Potter, that is, the actor who played him, Daniel Radcliffe. It is known that the young man suffered from alcoholism, and he admitted to this only in 2010. The glory and success of Harry Potter films hit him in the head.
We do not think that the reader would want such fame. Therefore, in this sense one should always be on the lookout.