A
gazette is a
public journalA public journal is a day-by-day record of the business and proceedings of a public body....
, a
newspaper of recordNewspaper of record is a term that may refer either to any publicly available newspaper that has been authorized by a government to publish public or legal notices , or any major newspaper that has a large circulation and whose editorial and news-gathering functions are considered professional and...
, or simply a
newspaperA newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...
.
In English- and French-speaking countries, newspaper publishers have applied the name
Gazette since the 17th century; today, numerous weekly and daily newspapers bear the name
The Gazette.
Gazette is a
loanwordA loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
from the French language; in turn, the French word is a 16th-century permutation of the Italian
gazeta, which is the name of a particular
VenetianThe Republic of Venice or Venetian Republic was a state originating from the city of Venice in Northeastern Italy. It existed for over a millennium, from the late 7th century until 1797. It was formally known as the Most Serene Republic of Venice and is often referred to as La Serenissima, in...
coin.
Gazeta became an
epithetAn epithet or byname is a descriptive term accompanying or occurring in place of a name and having entered common usage. It has various shades of meaning when applied to seemingly real or fictitious people, divinities, objects, and binomial nomenclature. It is also a descriptive title...
for
newspaper during the early and middle 16th century, when the first Venetian newspapers cost one gazeta. (Compare with other vernacularisms from publishing lingo, such as the British
penny dreadfulA penny dreadful was a type of British fiction publication in the 19th century that usually featured lurid serial stories appearing in parts over a number of weeks, each part costing an penny...
and the American
dime novelDime novel, though it has a specific meaning, has also become a catch-all term for several different forms of late 19th-century and early 20th-century U.S...
.) This loanword, with its various corruptions, persists in numerous modern languages.
Government gazettes
In
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, with the 1665 founding of
The Oxford Gazette (which became the
London GazetteThe London Gazette is one of the official journals of record of the British government, and the most important among such official journals in the United Kingdom, in which certain statutory notices are required to be published...
), the word
gazette came to indicate a public journal of the government; today, such a journal is sometimes called a government gazette. For some governments, publishing information in a gazette was or is a legal necessity by which official documents
came into forceComing into force or entry into force refers to the process by which legislation, regulations, treaties and other legal instruments come to have legal force and effect...
and entered the
public domainWorks are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...
. Such is the case for documents published in
The Gazette of IndiaThe Gazette of India is an authorised legal document and official journal of Government of India containing the mode of operations under the law of the land...
and in the
Royal Thai Government Gazette (est. 1858).
The
government of the United KingdomHer Majesty's Government is the central government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The Government is led by the Prime Minister, who selects all the remaining Ministers...
requires government gazettes of its member countries. Publication of the
Edinburgh GazetteThe Edinburgh Gazette, along with the London Gazette and the Belfast Gazette, is an official newspaper of the United Kingdom government...
, the official government newspaper in Scotland, began in 1699. The
Dublin GazetteThe Dublin Gazette was the Gazette, or official newspaper, of the Irish Executive, Britain's government in Ireland based at Dublin Castle, between 1705 and 1922...
of
IrelandIreland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
followed in 1705, but ceased when the
Irish Free StateThe Irish Free State was the state established as a Dominion on 6 December 1922 under the Anglo-Irish Treaty, signed by the British government and Irish representatives exactly twelve months beforehand...
seceded from the United Kingdom in 1922; the
Iris OifigiúilIris Oifigiúil replaced the former Dublin Gazette on 31 January 1922 as the official newspaper of record of the Irish Free State, the state which has since become known as Ireland....
(Irish:
Official Gazette) replaced it. The
Belfast GazetteThe Belfast Gazette, along with the London Gazette and the Edinburgh Gazette, is an official newspaper of the United Kingdom government. It is published by The Stationery Office , on behalf of Her Majesty's Stationery Office in Belfast, Northern Ireland.The Belfast Gazette was first published on...
of
Northern IrelandNorthern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...
published its first issue in 1921.
Gazette as a verb
In English, the
transitive verbIn syntax, a transitive verb is a verb that requires both a direct subject and one or more objects. The term is used to contrast intransitive verbs, which do not have objects.-Examples:Some examples of sentences with transitive verbs:...
to gazette means "to announce or publish in a gazette"; especially where
gazette refers to a public journal or a newspaper of record. E.g., "
Lake NakuruNakuru, the provincial capital of Kenya's Rift Valley province, with roughly 300,000 inhabitants, and currently the fourth largest urban centre in the country, lies about 1850 m above sea level...
was gazetted as a bird sanctuary in 1960, then was upgraded to
National ParkA national park is a reserve of natural, semi-natural, or developed land that a sovereign state declares or owns. Although individual nations designate their own national parks differently A national park is a reserve of natural, semi-natural, or developed land that a sovereign state declares or...
status in 1968."
British ArmyThe British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...
personnel decorations, promotions, and officer commissions are "gazetted" in the
London Gazette, the "Official Newspaper of Record for the United Kingdom".