The notion that the English word news — that is, information about recent events — is the plural of the word new just doesn’t sound right, so somebody cooked up the notion that the word is an acronym formed from the initial letters of the four cardinal compass points (north, east, west, and south), supposedly because news is information from all over the land.
Similar folk etymologies include the idea that ‘news’ derives from an acronym for the phrase “Notable Events, Weather, and Sports”: (image from OP here)
This tidbit is also obviously not true, as the concept of “news” was around (and was referred to as such) long before professional sports and reliable weather forecasting became mainstays of that industry (or even existed).
Likewise, the word ‘newspaper’ is not an acronym formed from the words “North, East, West, South, Past and Present Event Report.” A newspaper is so named because it is literally paper on which has been printed information about recent events (i.e., ‘news’).
It’s not surprising that the real explanation sounds a bit odd to us, because new is an adjective and not a noun, so how could it have a plural form? The answer is that although adjectives don’t generally have plurals in English, they do in other languages. In some Romance languages, for example, adjectives change to agree in number with the nouns they modify. In Spanish a white house is a casa blanca, but white houses are casas blancas. Likewise, in French a tall woman is a grande femme, but tall women are grandes femmes. When nouveau, the French word for new, modifies a plural (feminine) noun, it becomes nouvelles, which is also the French word for news.
Why would I do extra research to prove my professor wrong instead of just listening to what they said for the test? Idk you’re right but also assuming a lot lmfao
Journalism is the production and distribution of reports on the interaction of events, facts, ideas, and people that are the “news of the day” and that informs society to at least some degree of accuracy.
Gosh, I dunno. Couldn’t have anything to do with the subject matter, maybe?
It’s also the reporting of facts and the fact is that I was told in school that is where it came from, which is what I originally said. I didn’t scour book and the internet over every claim every teacher said. My bad. But yes they still taught research? What a crazy thing to ask
It’s also about accepting new information when you’re wrong. Which I have done. But you didn’t have to come at it the way you did? You can inform someone they are wrong without being hostile about it. How hard is it to say “hey actually that is incorrect” and then post snopes without being a dick?That’s reddit behavior.
Edit: thought I was replying to person who corrected me
It’s ok. I was being a bit of a dick. Though I was aiming for a more sarcastic/funny(?) dick than a pedantic one. I get you though.Assuming you are of the age before the internet, we were taught long ago that authority figures were right and kids/students were wrong, and we grew into this accepting things at face value culture. Before the internet, we kind of had to as we had very little available to us (as kids) to counter what we were told.
Anyway, that aside, back to the sarcastic dick thing, I was mostly poking at journalism as a whole. Not specifically you.
Sorry I also replied to that when I woke up in the middle of the night to pee, so I wasn’t fully there. Not coherent enough to pick up on any sarcasm for sure.
But it was during the internet but more in the advice animals dumb meme era. But I mainly majored in that to get my foot in the door other places. You’d be surprised, every class in every degree was reinforcing old school ethics and hammering the 24 hour networks. It was all about how to report facts without bias. Easy to make fun of now bc journalism kneels to capital but it was nothing to mock. Except my history of mass media professor I guess.
But I wasn’t cut out for office work either way so now I’m a truck driver lmfao
Wait you’re sticking with that it actually happened not that you were joking? What f-tier journalism school did you go to? And they tested on the origin of the world news, already an insane thing to do to in a journalistic qualification, AND they expected a totally absurd and obviously false answer?
I’m not gonna lie, yeah I regurgitated something they taught in an undergrad mass media history class over a decade ago. It was incorrect info and I get that.
Again, someone could have just plainly been like “yo dude that’s not right” and I would have been like “oh okay thank you” instead of everyone being like “JOURNALISM SCHOOL LMFAO fuck this guy”
First off:
THIS IS THE THE SAME POST CITED IN THE SNOPES ARTICLE DEBUNKING IT
I guess they didn’t also teach research in “journalism school”?
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/news-etymology/
Origin
Some explanations are just too simple to accept:
The notion that the English word news — that is, information about recent events — is the plural of the word new just doesn’t sound right, so somebody cooked up the notion that the word is an acronym formed from the initial letters of the four cardinal compass points (north, east, west, and south), supposedly because news is information from all over the land.
Similar folk etymologies include the idea that ‘news’ derives from an acronym for the phrase “Notable Events, Weather, and Sports”: (image from OP here)
This tidbit is also obviously not true, as the concept of “news” was around (and was referred to as such) long before professional sports and reliable weather forecasting became mainstays of that industry (or even existed).
Likewise, the word ‘newspaper’ is not an acronym formed from the words “North, East, West, South, Past and Present Event Report.” A newspaper is so named because it is literally paper on which has been printed information about recent events (i.e., ‘news’).
It’s not surprising that the real explanation sounds a bit odd to us, because new is an adjective and not a noun, so how could it have a plural form? The answer is that although adjectives don’t generally have plurals in English, they do in other languages. In some Romance languages, for example, adjectives change to agree in number with the nouns they modify. In Spanish a white house is a casa blanca, but white houses are casas blancas. Likewise, in French a tall woman is a grande femme, but tall women are grandes femmes. When nouveau, the French word for new, modifies a plural (feminine) noun, it becomes nouvelles, which is also the French word for news.
Not so strange after all.
Why would I do extra research to prove my professor wrong instead of just listening to what they said for the test? Idk you’re right but also assuming a lot lmfao
Gosh, I dunno. Couldn’t have anything to do with the subject matter, maybe?
It’s also the reporting of facts and the fact is that I was told in school that is where it came from, which is what I originally said. I didn’t scour book and the internet over every claim every teacher said. My bad. But yes they still taught research? What a crazy thing to ask
It’s also about accepting new information when you’re wrong. Which I have done. But you didn’t have to come at it the way you did? You can inform someone they are wrong without being hostile about it. How hard is it to say “hey actually that is incorrect” and then post snopes without being a dick?That’s reddit behavior.
Edit: thought I was replying to person who corrected me
It’s ok. I was being a bit of a dick. Though I was aiming for a more sarcastic/funny(?) dick than a pedantic one. I get you though.Assuming you are of the age before the internet, we were taught long ago that authority figures were right and kids/students were wrong, and we grew into this accepting things at face value culture. Before the internet, we kind of had to as we had very little available to us (as kids) to counter what we were told.
Anyway, that aside, back to the sarcastic dick thing, I was mostly poking at journalism as a whole. Not specifically you.
But yeah, it’s all good.
Sorry I also replied to that when I woke up in the middle of the night to pee, so I wasn’t fully there. Not coherent enough to pick up on any sarcasm for sure.
But it was during the internet but more in the advice animals dumb meme era. But I mainly majored in that to get my foot in the door other places. You’d be surprised, every class in every degree was reinforcing old school ethics and hammering the 24 hour networks. It was all about how to report facts without bias. Easy to make fun of now bc journalism kneels to capital but it was nothing to mock. Except my history of mass media professor I guess.
But I wasn’t cut out for office work either way so now I’m a truck driver lmfao
Wait you’re sticking with that it actually happened not that you were joking? What f-tier journalism school did you go to? And they tested on the origin of the world news, already an insane thing to do to in a journalistic qualification, AND they expected a totally absurd and obviously false answer?
Were you training to work at fox?
I’m not gonna lie, yeah I regurgitated something they taught in an undergrad mass media history class over a decade ago. It was incorrect info and I get that.
Again, someone could have just plainly been like “yo dude that’s not right” and I would have been like “oh okay thank you” instead of everyone being like “JOURNALISM SCHOOL LMFAO fuck this guy”