Publicacioun

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The act of announcing or releasing information to the general public ; a book, periodical or other printed work offered for sale or distribution
2. Making news or information widely known to people at large ; a printed text or issued material made available to readers
3. The release of a message or work before the public eye ; an edition or document that has been printed and circulated

Etymology: "Publicacioun" is a Middle English spelling of "publication," and it is the form that Chaucer and his contemporaries would have written. Its ancestry runs through Old French "publicacion" from Latin "publicatio," a noun meaning the act of making something public, derived from "publicare" ("to make public"), which itself comes from "publicus" ("of the people"). The Latin root is tied to "populus," the people, so the core idea is of something brought before the community as a whole. English borrowed the word in the late 1300s, and the spelling with "-oun" reflects the Anglo-French endings of that period, which shifted to "-ion" as the standard form settled over the following centuries. The meaning has moved steadily from the general sense of making something known toward the specific sense of issuing printed material, which grew more prominent as printing spread. The spelling you have here is an older variant preserved in medieval texts rather than a word in current use.