Precise adjectives

The list of adjectives that say how sure something is. The third entry is notoire, and English took the same word and kept only the bad half. Notoire in French is register-neutral: it means widely known, established, common knowledge — un fait notoire is an acknowledged fact, and sa rigueur est notoire is a compliment. English « notorious » is always an accusation: it needs a bad thing to attach to, and « his rigour is notorious » reads as sarcasm. The noun follows the same split — la notoriété is simply how well known somebody is, while « notoriety » is fame for the wrong reasons. So the English here is « well known » or « widely acknowledged », and the cognate is the one word that cannot be used. Latin notus, known, carried no judgement at all.