What about the sense of "hacker" as "a person who hacks around" -- when I was growing up in the 1950's that was a common usage. A bunch of us would get together after school or on weekends "just to hack around" -- no sports or games were involved, in fact the idea was t...

My vote for the stronger word, pejoratively, is "infamy."

This is the first time I've disagreed with Dr Goodword -- you define "notoriety" (noun, def. 1) with the adjectival definition (i.e. of "notorious"). Surely "notoriety" means "fame" or "the state of being famous or well-known" -- not "famous, we...

I'm also thinking "gloom" might be related to "gloaming" (twilight) -- the derivation of "gloaming" seems to be Middle English from old German for "glow." All of these words relate to different qualities of light/darkness. The other meaning of "loom"...

The discussion of "loom" makes me wonder whether it is related to "gloom" -- which also, I believe, is of uncertain origin and has somewhat parallel connotations.