well-known

See also: wellknown

English

Alternative forms

• well known, wellknown

Etymology

From Middle English well knowen. By surface analysis, well +‎ known.

Pronunciation

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˌwɛlˈnoʊn/

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˌwɛlˈnəʊn/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: (General American) -oʊn, (Received Pronunciation) -əʊn

Adjective

well-known (comparative better-known or more well-known, superlative best-known or most well-known)

1. Familiar, famous, renowned, noted or widely known.

   Antonym: little-known

   • 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XV, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:

     Edward Churchill still attended to his work in a hopeless mechanical manner like a sleep-walker who walks safely on a well-known round. But his Roman collar galled him, his cossack stifled him, his biretta was as uncomfortable as a merry-andrew's cap and bells.

   • 2013 July-August, Philip J. Bushnell, “Solvents, Ethanol, Car Crashes & Tolerance”, in American Scientist:

     Furthermore, this increase in risk is comparable to the risk of death from leukemia after long-term exposure to benzene, another solvent, which has the well-known property of causing this type of cancer.

   • 2024 November 27, Ben Jones, “Testing trains, tracks and systems”, in RAIL, number 1023, page 33:

     Less well-known is NR's High Marnham test track, which occupies part of the former Lancashire, Derbyshire and East Coast Railway (LDECR) Chesterfield-Lincoln line in Nottinghamshire.

2. (computing, not comparable) Generally recognized; reserved for some usual purpose.
   • 1972, Vint Cerf, Jon Postel, RFC 322 - Well known socket numbers:

     We would like to catalog other sockets which are supposed to be well-known

   • 2003, John Mueller, .NET development security solutions:

     If the call to this function fails, you can assume the SID was invalid — even if it's a well-known SID.

   • 2007, Larry L Peterson, Bruce S Davie, Computer networks: a systems approach:

     A common approach is for the server to accept messages at a well-known port.

Translations

familiar, widely known

• Bulgarian: известен (bg) (izvesten), познат (bg) (poznat)
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 著名 (zh) (zhùmíng), 出名 (zh) (chūmíng), 有名 (zh) (yǒumíng), 眾所周知／众所周知 (zh) (zhòngsuǒzhōuzhī)

• Czech: dobře známý, pověstný (cs)
• Danish: velkendt
• Esperanto: konata (eo)
• Finnish: tuttu (fi), tunnettu (fi)
• French: bien connu
• Galician: ben coñecido m, sabido (gl)
• German: wohlbekannt (de), wohl bekannt, berühmt (de)
• Hausa: shahararru, shahararre
• Hebrew: מוכר (he) (mukár)
• Hindi: प्रसिद्ध (hi) (prasiddh), प्रख्यात (prakhyāt), विख्यात (hi) (vikhyāt)
• Hungarian: híres (hu), közismert (hu)
• Irish: aithnidiúil, clúiteach, iomráiteach
• Italian: famoso (it), rinomato (it), noto (it), celebre (it), popolare (it)
• Japanese: 名高い (ja) (なだかい, nadakai)
• Latin: perspectus, nōtus (la)
• Lithuanian: gerai žinomas
• Macedonian: добропознат (dobropoznat), познат (poznat)
• Malayalam: അറിയപ്പെടുന്ന (aṟiyappeṭunna), പ്രശസ്ത (ml) (praśasta), പേരുകേട്ട (pērukēṭṭa)
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: kjent (no), velkjent

  Nynorsk: kjend, kjent, velkjend, velkjent

• Ottoman Turkish: بللی (belli)
• Russian: знамени́тый (ru) (znamenítyj), изве́стный (ru) (izvéstnyj), выдаю́щийся (ru) (vydajúščijsja)
• Slovak: známy (sk)
• Spanish: consabido (es), de marras (es), famoso (es)
• Swahili: maalum (sw)
• Swedish: välbekant (sv)
• Volapük: benosevädik

See also

• celebrity