storied

1. 1
   adjective

   Widely discussed or written about.

   Journalists returned again and again to the storied career of the aging champion.

   The expedition became storied in the press long before it reached the summit.

   Similarlegendary

   Oppositeobscure, unknown, unsung, forgotten

   Note

   Built from story plus -ed, it describes someone or something that has gathered stories around it, close to legendary in meaning. It sits easily in news writing: a storied technology executive, or Spain arriving as storied visitors in Graeme McGarry's account of Scotland's win. Keep it apart from the building sense, which comes from story "floor, level" and counts floors, not tales.

2. 2
   adjective

   Relating to or belonging to history; historical.

   The chronicle preserves storied accounts of the kingdom's earliest rulers.

   These storied walls have witnessed every major era of the nation.

   Similarhistoric, historical, venerable, legendary

   Note

   Here the past belongs to a thing. Melville's Moby-Dick (1851) speaks of "storied weapons": a bent lance with which Nathan Swain once killed fifteen whales between a sunrise and a sunset. The word marks an object that carries a history of its own, and it reaches back further than the "much talked about" sense, which describes present fame.

3. 3
   adjectiveUS

   Having a specified number of floors or levels, as in a building.

   Developers replaced the old row houses with a six-storied apartment block.

   A twelve-storied office tower now stands where the warehouse used to be.

   Note

   The architect's word, from the floor sense of story rather than the tale-telling adjective. Henry Wotton's The Elements of Architecture (1624) already contrasts porches of one level with "Storied buildings." Today the sense is marked as American and usually follows a number, as in a twelve-storied tower. On its own it can mean many-leveled, as in Rider Haggard's "storied desolation" in She.

4. 4
   verb

   Simple past tense and past participle of story.

   The artisans storied the cathedral ceiling with scenes from scripture.

   The bronze doors were storied with reliefs of the city's founding.

   Note

   A regular -ed form, with the final y of story turning to i as it does in carried. The older verb is transitive: one stories an event by telling it. The newer verb, posting a story of pictures or short videos to an app, can take an object or stand alone, and it is sometimes capitalized after the platform's feature.

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