gazetteer
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˌɡæzəˈtɪə/
ipa: /ˌɡæzəˈtɪəɹ/
rhymes: -ɪə(ɹ)
Forms: form: gazetteers
form: gazetteering
form: gazetteered
form: gazetteered
Etymology: The noun is derived from The Gazetteer’s, or Newsman’s Interpreter (1st edition, 1692), the name of a geographical index compiled by the English clergyman and historian Laurence Echard (c. 1670 – 1730); in the preface he said “The Title was given me by a very eminent Person, whom I forbear to name.” The preface also stated that the work was “partly design’d for all such as frequent Coffee-Houses, and other places for News”, that is, to help readers better understand the newspapers written by gazetteers or journalists (see etymology 1).
The verb is derived from the noun.
Senses: examples: text: Such a cosmopolitan collection of post-marks is seldom made. They have a conventional range, from Buckingham Palace and Osborne, through university towns, scholars' libraries, remote parishes in Scotland, the seats of power in British India, to places Down East, and towns at the West not yet gazetteered; […]
ref: 1864, John Weiss, “Correspondence—Knowledge of the People—Hand-writing—Projected Work on the Development of Christianity”, in Life and Correspondence of Theodore Parker, Minister of the Twenty-eighth Congregational Society, Boston. […], volume II, New York, N.Y.: D[aniel] Appleton & Company, […], →OCLC, page 43:
text: Neither of them could make poetry coalesce with gazetteering or chronicle-making. It was like trying to put a declaration of love into the forms of a declaration in trover.
ref: 1876, James Russell Lowell, “Spenser”, in Among My Books. Second Series., Boston, Mass.: James R[ipley] Osgood and Company, late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co., →OCLC, page 137:
text: […] Wressley went back to the Foreign Office and his "Wajahs," a compiling, gazetteering, report-writing hack, who would have been dear at three hundred rupees a month.
ref: 1888, Rudyard Kipling, “Wressley of the Foreign Office”, in Plain Tales from the Hills, Calcutta: Thacker, Spink and Co.; London: W. Thacker & Co., →OCLC, page 266:
text: […] Peter Underwood […] has carefully and systematically gazetteered ghosts throughout Britain.
ref: 1981, Michael Ashley, “The Supernatural”, in Richard Davis, editor, The Encyclopedia of Horror, London: Octopus Books, →ISBN, page 116, column 2:
text: I have a lease, Captain. I paid you a thousand dollars. The river is even gazetteered in my name.
ref: 1987, J[ames] G[raham] Ballard, “Noon”, in The Day of Creation, 1st Canadian edition, Toronto, Ont.: Lester & Orpen Dennys, →ISBN, page 85:
text: A problem that almost defies solution in such a work is the rendering of place-names on the maps, which in the case of The International Atlas are gazetteered according to the local name and in English, German, Spanish, French, and Portuguese.
ref: 1996, Norman J[oseph] W[illiam] Thrower, “Modern Cartography: Private and Institutional Maps”, in Maps & Civilization: Cartography in Culture and Society, Chicago, Ill.; London: University of Chicago Press, →ISBN, page 220:
text: The success of the gigantic undertaking has been unparalleled: few countries, if any, are more thoroughly gazetteered than India.
ref: 2002, W. Francis, Gazetteer of South India, New Delhi: Mittal Publ., →OCLC:
topics: geography
natural-sciences
glosses: To describe the geography of (a country or other place) in a gazetteer (etymology 2, noun sense 1).