Word.ws English Dictionary

15 minutes of fame

15 minutes of fame noun: a very short time in the spotlight or brief flurry with fame, after which the person or subject involved is quickly forgotten.

Noun

15 minutes of fame pl (plural only)

  1. (idiomatic, plural, plural-only) A very short time in the spotlight or brief flurry with fame, after which the person or subject involved is quickly forgotten.
    • […] Paula [Jones] was, even to her lawyers, a loose cannon—as prepared to risk her marriage and her well-being to get the president to confess his original sin as she was intent on making big money and getting her fifteen minutes of fame.2007, Nigel Hamilton, Bill Clinton: Mastering the Presidency, New York: PublicAffairs, →ISBN, page 274
    • In the next chapter, we'll meet twenty-five hopefuls who have already begun to experience their fifteen minutes of fame as a result of exposure on YouTube.2008, Frederick Levy, 15 Minutes of Fame: Becoming A Star In The YouTube Revolution, Alpha Books, →ISBN

15 minutes of fame meaning in Marathi

15 minutes of fame in Marathi

fifteen minutes of fame
पंधरा मिनिटे प्रसिद्धी pandhrā miniṭe prasiddhī

Examples of 15 minutes of fame in a sentence

  • After just a month on television, this ordinary chap from Catford, south London, was an overnight superstar, ready to milk his 15 minutes of fame.2016 January 31, Anna Williamson, “The flip side of instant fame”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 23 Mar 2016:
  • Kennedy Airport and into what would be one of the new decade’s shortest, strangest 15 minutes of fame.2022 April 27, Jennifer Schuessler, “An Heir, a $25 Million Giveaway and 30,000 Unopened Letters”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived...

Synonyms of 15 minutes of fame

Origin of 15 minutes of fame

First appears c. 1968, although a use in French appears as early as 1821 in Histoire de l'Assemblée constituante by Charles Lacretelle. Often misattributed to Andy Warhol, in a catalogue of an exhibition of his art in Stockholm: “In the future everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.”

Words formed from 15 minutes of fame

Questions about 15 minutes of fame

What does 15 minutes of fame mean?
15 minutes of fame means a very short time in the spotlight or brief flurry with fame, after which the person or subject involved is quickly forgotten.
What is 15 minutes of fame in Marathi?
15 minutes of fame in Marathi is पंधरा मिनिटे प्रसिद्धी (pandhrā miniṭe prasiddhī). See 15 minutes of fame meaning in Marathi.
How do you use 15 minutes of fame in a sentence?
After just a month on television, this ordinary chap from Catford, south London, was an overnight superstar, ready to milk his 15 minutes of fame.
What part of speech is 15 minutes of fame?
15 minutes of fame is a noun.

Words near 15 minutes of fame in the dictionary

  1. 14s
  2. 14th
  3. 14ᵗʰ
  4. 15 megabytes of fame
  5. 15 minutes
  6. 15 minutes of fame
  7. 15 minutes of shame
  8. 15 puzzle
  9. 15 puzzles
  10. 15-crown-5
  11. 15-gon

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: 15 minutes of fame (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-15 minutes of fame.ogg.

Cite this entry: “15 minutes of fame.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/15_minutes_of_fame. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.