English - The Real Deal

早就听说过news来源于north、east、west和south的首字母，因为来自四面八方的消息构成了“新闻”。一直觉得这理论不靠谱（虽然我挺希望它是真的），现在得到了证实。

People mention the points-of-the-compass story so often as the source of news that it’s not surprising it makes you wonder if it’s correct. For the record, it isn’t.

Where did this idea of its being an acronym come from? George A Thompson recently found the story falsely asserted in the Morning Courier & New-York Enquirer, dated 23 April 1842: “News is not, as many imagine, derived from the adjective New. In former times, it was a prevalent practice to put over the periodical publications of the day the initial letters of the cardinal points of the compass … importing that these papers contained intelligence from the four quarters of the globe; and from this practice is derived the term of newspaper.”

果然是误传，越传越流行，大家就都相信了。不过我倒是觉得，“东西南北”这个错误理论很生动，记一记也无妨。

另外，World Wide Words还提到了我不知道的一点：news以前是复数，16世纪开始单、复数并行使用，现在则是彻底演化为单数。

By the thirteenth century, news, while still being plural, had taken on its modern sense of reports or accounts of interesting or important events. But from the sixteenth century, this plural usage ran in parallel with our modern one of treating it as a singular mass noun, which has now, of course, prevailed.

Bonus video: Peter Cincotti - Goodbye Philadelphia

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 8th, 2008 at 11:55 pm and is filed under Common Mistake. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.