From Middle English fame, from Old French fame, itself borrowed from Latin fāma, from Proto-Indo-European *bʰéh₂-meh₂, from *bʰeh₂-.

Displaced native Old English hlīsa.

• IPA: /feɪm/

fame (uncountable)

1. (now, rare) Something said or reported; gossip, rumour.
   • 1667, John Milton, “Book I”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC ↗; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC ↗, lines 651-4:

     There went a fame in Heav'n that he ere long / Intended to create, and therein plant / A generation, whom his choice regard / Should favour […].

   • 2012, Faramerz Dabhoiwala, The Origins of Sex, Penguin, published 2013, page 23:

     If the accused could produce a specified number of honest neighbours to swear publicly that the suspicion was unfounded, and if no one else came forward to contradict them convincingly, the charge was dropped: otherwise the common fame was held to be true.

2. One's reputation.
3. The state of being famous or well-known and spoken of.

   Synonyms: famousness

   Antonyms: obscurity, unknownness

   • c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Fourth, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC ↗, [Act II, scene iii]:

     I find thou art no less than fame hath bruited.

   • 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter I, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC ↗:

     I was about to say that I had known the Celebrity from the time he wore kilts. But I see I will have to amend that, because he was not a celebrity then, nor, indeed, did he achieve fame until some time after I left New York for the West.

• French: gloire, célébrité
• German: Ruhm, Berühmtheit, Bekanntheit
• Italian: fama
• Portuguese: fama
• Russian: сла́ва
• Spanish: fama

fame (fames, present participle faming; simple past and past participle famed)

1. (transitive) to make (someone or something) famous

• famed
• famous