tabloid

英文词源

tabloid

tabloid: [19] Tabloid originated as a trade-name for a brand of tablets of condensed medicine, registered in 1884 by Burroughs, Wellcome and Company. It was an alteration of tablet [14], which came from Old French tablete, a diminutive form of table (source of English table). This originally denoted a ‘slab for writing on or inscribing’. Such slabs would have been flat and often quite small, and in the late 16th century the term came to be applied to a ‘flat compressed piece of something’ – such as soap or medicine.

The notion of ‘compression’ or ‘condensation’ underlies the use of tabloid for newspapers of small page size and ‘condensed’ versions of news stories, which emerged at the beginning of the 20th century (‘He advocated tabloid journalism’, Westminster gazette 1 January 1901).
=> table

tabloid (n.)

1884, Tabloid, "small tablet of medicine," trademark name (by Burroughs, Wellcome and Co.) for compressed or concentrated chemicals and drugs, a hybrid formed from tablet + Greek-derived suffix -oid. By 1898, it was being used figuratively to mean a compressed form or dose of anything, hence tabloid journalism (1901), and newspapers that typified it (1917), so called for having short, condensed news articles and/or for being small in size. Associated originally with Alfred C. Harmsworth, editor and proprietor of the "London Daily Mail."

Mr. Harmsworth entered a printing office twenty years ago as office-boy, and today owns thirty periodicals besides The Mail. Upon a friendly challenge from Mr. Pulitzer of The New York World, the English journalist issued the first number of The World for the new century in the ideal form. The size of the page was reduced to four columns and the general make-up was similar in appearance to that of one of the weekly magazines. Current news was presented in condensed and tabulated form, of which the editor says: "The world enters today upon the twentieth or time-saving century. I claim that by my system of condensed or tabloid journalism hundreds of working hours can be saved each year." ["The Twentieth Century Newspaper," in "The Social Gospel," February 1901]