fame

FAYM/feɪm/

4 meanings of fame

1
noununcountable
The condition of being famous and widely talked about, especially for positive achievements.
The young actor achieved fame almost overnight after the film's release.
Lasting fame eluded the inventor until long after his death.
Similarrenown, celebrity, famousness
Oppositeobscurity
Note
Here the talk has hardened into a condition someone holds. Shakespeare's Henry IV still lets fame speak ("no less than fame hath bruited"), an echo of the old "rumor" meaning. In the American novelist Winston Churchill's The Celebrity (1897), fame is something a person achieves, and achieve is its natural verb. Its opposite is obscurity. Like the other noun senses, it is usually uncountable: one has fame, not a fame.
2
noununcountable
The general opinion that others hold about a person's character or worth.
His fame as a fair judge spread through the district.
Years of honest dealing built her fame among the local traders.
Similarreputation, repute, name, standing, renown
3
verbtransitive
To make a person or thing famous or widely known.
A single best-selling novel famed the once-obscure writer.
The victory will fame his name throughout the region.
Similarcelebrate, glorify, immortalize

Less common meaning

4
nounarchaicuncountable
Something said or reported about a person or event; gossip or rumor.
Fame of the king's illness traveled faster than any messenger.
She paid little heed to the idle fame passing through the market stalls.
Note
The sense nearest its Latin source: fāma meant talk, rumor, report, from a root meaning "to speak." Milton's Paradise Lost (1667) has "There went a fame in Heav'n," and Faramerz Dabhoiwala's The Origins of Sex (2012) uses "common fame" for neighborhood talk that a charge could rest on. Outside such historical or literary settings it reads as archaic, so in ordinary prose say rumor or report.

Practice

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Origin

From Middle English fame, from Old French fame ('celebrity, renown'), borrowed from Latin fāma ('talk, rumor, report, reputation'), which traces back to a Proto-Indo-European root meaning 'to speak or tell'. It is related to Ancient Greek phḗmē ('talk').