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INFAMOUS
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I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Known widely and usually unfavorably
Example:
the infamous Benedict Arnold
Synonyms:
ill-famed; infamous; notorious
Classified under:
Similar:
disreputable (lacking respectability in character or behavior or appearance)
Derivation:
infamy (evil fame or public reputation)
infamy (a state of extreme dishonor)
Context examples:
Twenty years ago, researchers from Washington State University made the accidental discovery that the now infamous plastics ingredient known as bisphenol A or BPA had inadvertently leached out of plastic cages used to house female mice in the lab, causing a sudden increase in chromosomally abnormal eggs in the animals.
(Reproductive Problems Reported In Lab Mice after BPA Replacements in Plastics, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)
He said, “those animals, like other brutes, had their females in common; but in this they differed, that the she Yahoo would admit the males while she was pregnant; and that the hes would quarrel and fight with the females, as fiercely as with each other; both which practices were such degrees of infamous brutality, as no other sensitive creature ever arrived at.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
And that, said Rosa Dartle, is so strong a claim, preferred by one so infamous, that if I had any feeling in my breast but scorn and abhorrence of you, it would freeze it up.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
I told you, the other day, of his infamous behaviour to Mr. Darcy; and you yourself, when last at Longbourn, heard in what manner he spoke of the man who had behaved with such forbearance and liberality towards him.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
My father and brother had not made my marriage known to their acquaintance; because, in the very first letter I wrote to apprise them of the union—having already begun to experience extreme disgust of its consequences, and, from the family character and constitution, seeing a hideous future opening to me—I added an urgent charge to keep it secret: and very soon the infamous conduct of the wife my father had selected for me was such as to make him blush to own her as his daughter-in-law.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
For, as to that infamous practice of acquiring great employments by dancing on the ropes, or badges of favour and distinction by leaping over sticks and creeping under them, the reader is to observe, that they were first introduced by the grandfather of the emperor now reigning, and grew to the present height by the gradual increase of party and faction.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
Again she read on; but every line proved more clearly that the affair, which she had believed it impossible that any contrivance could so represent as to render Mr. Darcy's conduct in it less than infamous, was capable of a turn which must make him entirely blameless throughout the whole.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
It was strictly enjoined, that the project of starving you by degrees should be kept a secret; but the sentence of putting out your eyes was entered on the books; none dissenting, except Bolgolam the admiral, who, being a creature of the empress, was perpetually instigated by her majesty to insist upon your death, she having borne perpetual malice against you, on account of that infamous and illegal method you took to extinguish the fire in her apartment.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
Let me recommend you, however, as a friend, not to give implicit confidence to all his assertions; for as to Mr. Darcy's using him ill, it is perfectly false; for, on the contrary, he has always been remarkably kind to him, though George Wickham has treated Mr. Darcy in a most infamous manner.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
He observed, that among the diversions of our nobility and gentry, I had mentioned gaming: he desired to know at what age this entertainment was usually taken up, and when it was laid down; how much of their time it employed; whether it ever went so high as to affect their fortunes; whether mean, vicious people, by their dexterity in that art, might not arrive at great riches, and sometimes keep our very nobles in dependence, as well as habituate them to vile companions, wholly take them from the improvement of their minds, and force them, by the losses they received, to learn and practise that infamous dexterity upon others?
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
