It’s a powerful word, notorious, so much so that Duran Duran had to sing it twice. (That’s once for each Duran.) But it’s interesting that the common usage turned out the way it did. If we follow the literal etymology, notorious should just mean notable, noteworthy, without implication of either good or ill. In time though it has lodged closer to one end of the moral spectrum, with the infamous rather than the famous.
It’s not always negative, because it might include a level of admiration for resisting rules: Jack the Ripper is notorious in a very different way to Ned Kelly. That is to say, it could mean bad, it could mean badass. Still, it always sits somewhere that involves a measure of darkness, of division, of defiance, of…
