Noun

(-)

What is said or reported; gossip, rumour.

* 1667 , (John Milton), (Paradise Lost) , Book 1, ll. 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 2013, p. 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.

One's reputation.

The state of being famous or well-known and spoken of.

* (William Shakespeare)

I find thou art no less than fame hath bruited.

*

, title=(The Celebrity), chapter=1 , passage=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.}}

Noun

(dignities)

A quality or state worthy of esteem and respect.

* 1752 , (Henry Fielding), , I. viii

He uttered this ... with great majesty, or, as he called it, dignity .

* 1981 , African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights , art. 5

Every individual shall have the right to the respect of the dignity inherent in a human being.

* 2008 , Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology (ECNH) [Switzerland]

'The dignity' of living beings with regard to plants: Moral consideration of plants for their own sake', 3: ... the ECNH has been expected to make proposals from an ethical perspective to concretise the constitutional term ' dignity of living beings with regard to plants. Dignity of Plants

Decorum, formality, stateliness.

* 1934 , Aldous Huxley, "Puerto Barrios", in Beyond the Mexique Bay :

Official DIGNITY tends to increase in inverse ratio to the importance of the country in which the office is held.Columbia World of Quotations 1996.

High office, rank, or station.

* 1781 , Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire , F. III. 231:

He ... distributed the civil and military dignities among his favourites and followers.

* Macaulay

And the king said, What honour and dignity hath been done to Mordecai for this?

One holding high rank; a dignitary.

* Bible, Jude 8.

These filthy dreamers speak evil of dignities .

(obsolete) Fundamental principle; axiom; maxim.

* Sir Thomas Browne

Sciences concluding from dignities , and principles known by themselves.