Gazettes

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Collections of published periodicals that report news
2. Official journals that announce government proceedings and legal notices
3. Notifications issued in printed form to inform the public about various topics and events

Etymology: The most surprising thing about "gazette" is that it was named after a coin. In sixteenth-century Venice, news sheets were sold for a small coin called a "gazeta," worth about a halfpenny, and the newspaper took its name from the price. The Venetian name for that news sheet was "gazeta dele novità," meaning "a gazeta of news," and the word passed through Italian "gazzetta" into French "gazette" before reaching English. The English word therefore carries a trace of a long-vanished market transaction: a reader handing over one small coin for a sheet of current events. The same naming pattern appears in later English terms like "penny dreadful" and "dime novel," where the cover price became the label for the whole category of cheap publication. "Gazettes" is simply the plural, referring to several such periodicals gathered together.