OK, I just have to say this.
"Infamous" does not mean super famous, or extra famous, or, as they would say in 1984, doubleplusfamous. Infamous means really, really bad. Webster's says it means, "having a reputation of the worst kind: notoriously evil."
It is derived from the word "infamy", like when FDR said December 7, 1941 was a day that would live in infamy.
I don't care what you heard about El Guapo, "infamous" does not mean something is even more than famous.
I've noticed the word being used more and more lately and I just had to say something.
Like, when someone talks about his infamous baby. Really? Your baby is infamous?
Really?
I mean maybe your baby is really terrible, but I don't think that's what you meant.
That is all.
7 comments:
Amen. My personal pet peeve is the frequent use of the fake word 'irregardless' when you really mean to say 'regardless' or 'irrespective.'
Infamous is actually one of the vocabulary words I'm working on with 2 of my reading students. And when I say working on, I mean we talk about it 5 days a week until it's created a dark and permanant mark on their brains...anyway, examples of infamous people we've come up with are: Hitler, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy and so on and so forth.
Note there are no babies on said list.
And I agree with the "irregardless" comment above.
And whatever happened to the word "whom"? I can count on one hand how many people I know that use it.
Rant over.
Oh no, rant just beginning. I'm with you all on irregardless (which is ugly besides being self-contradicting) and infamous. And whom, too. I actually see that word a lot in student papers, but they still think that "whom" means the fancy, high-fallutin' version of "who." Another personal mission: eradicating both split infinitives (a lost battle, given its comfortable proliferation in linguistically conservative places like the NYT) and ending sentences in prepositions. But I'm, like, circa 1910s on all this stuff... I mean, I still think "he" is a perfectly fine gender neutral pronoun. (And rolled my eyes at my boss this morning when he amended his statement about "undermanned" to include also "underwomanned," outta respect for the ladies. Yuck.)
MNJENN
I love to flagrantly split infinitives. I am happy that the NYT is on board, too. I see it as proof that this beautiful language of ours is alive and well, growing and evolving the way language should.
I also have no problem ending a sentence with a preposition, especially when that preposition is part of a phrasal verb.
However, people who add an apostrophe when they want to make something plural should be stoned.
That's right. When it comes to punctuation, I get downright biblical.
Ha ha, I love your smarty-pants, VERY TRUE tirades. :)
LOL. I've heard that word mis-used before too. It drives me nuts.
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." - The Princess Bride
Ooh, and a 1984 reference! Haven't seen one of those in a while. How very literate of you.
You should check out Weird Al's twitter. He has posted lots of little videos of he and his wife correcting grammar in signage in public places.
Thanks for the rants, people. ;-)
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