gazeta

In the mid-1500s, Venice was the information capital of Europe. Handwritten news sheets called avvisi circulated through the city, reporting on wars, commerce, politics, and diplomacy. These sheets were read aloud in public places, and the admission price was one gazeta—a small Venetian coin worth about two soldi.

The coin's name may derive from gazza, the Italian word for 'magpie'—a chattering bird, which made it an apt metaphor for news. Others connect it to the Arabic ghazat or the Greek gaza ('treasury'). Whatever its origin, the coin gave its name to the news sheets, and gazeta became gazette.

The word spread across Europe as printed newspapers emerged. The Gazette de France (1631) was one of the first official newspapers. England's London Gazette (1665) became the government's official journal of record and is still published today—the oldest continuously published newspaper in Britain.

Today, gazette survives primarily in the names of newspapers—The Montreal Gazette, the Police Gazette—and in the legal term 'to gazette' (to publish officially). The Venetian coin that bought you the news is long gone, but the word it left behind still names the news itself.