Tijding

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Word or news that has been brought from somewhere, often an archaic message about an event
2. An archaic term for a piece of news or a report that someone has carried to another person
3. Information conveyed from one party to another, especially news of something that has happened

Etymology: "Tijding" is an archaic or dialectal spelling of "tiding," the Middle English word for news or information, and it is a plural-looking form that became a singular noun. Its root is Old Norse "tíðindi," meaning "events, occurrences, news," the plural of "tíðindi"'s neuter stem, borrowed into English during the Viking-age contact of the Danelaw in northern and eastern England. The Old Norse word was itself built from "tíð," meaning "time" or "season," the same source as English "tide," so the earliest sense was closer to "things that happen in their time." Over time the English word narrowed. Medieval writers used "tidings" mostly for reports of events, especially important or distant ones, and the singular "tiding" appeared as a rarer back-formation. The spelling "tijding" is a variant that appears in some older texts and some modern spelling-reform or nonstandard writing, and it is not standard in current English. Today "tidings" survives mainly in the plural, often in phrases like "good tidings" or "glad tidings."