tabloid
Part of speech: noun
adj
verb
Morphological type: derivation
Topics: journalism
media
nautical
newspapers
printing
publishing
transport
Etymology: The noun is derived from tabl(et) + -oid (suffix meaning ‘having the likeness of, resembling’), originally coined by the United Kingdom firm Burroughs, Wellcome & Company as a brand name for their medicines and other products such as tea in tablet form and registered as a trademark on 14 March 1884.
Noun sense 2 (“compact or compressed version of something; especially something having a popular or sensational nature”) is influenced by noun sense 2.2 (“newspaper characterized as favouring stories of a popular or sensational nature over serious news”).
The adjective and verb are derived from the noun.
Base: tablet
Affixes: -oid
Inflected forms:
form: tabloids
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: tabloids
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: tabloiding
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: tabloided
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: tabloided
pos: verb
tags: past
Senses:
gloss: A small, compressed portion of a chemical, drug, food substance, etc.; a pill, a tablet.
pos: noun
tags: archaic
examples: One of the compartments was found to contain some forty compressed tabloids, which on analysis proved to be potassium bromide.
A large number of tabloids are contained in a very small bottle, and only require crushing and dissolving in the stated quantity of water to produce a large volume of solution.
‘It's those tabloids!’ Conroy stamped his foot feebly as he blew his nose. ‘They’ve knocked me out.’
You have a couple of thousand pounds in exchequer bills, 50,000 shares worth tenpence a dozen, and half a dozen tabloids of cyanide of potassium to poison yourself with when you are found out.
"Crook in the guts," he says tersely. The picturesque reports of previously-treated and disgusted patients have left him doubtful, and he casts an anathematising eye upon the "Black Jack" bottle. "Tabloids and duty!" says the doctor, and the sufferer sighs with relief. There's no taste in tabloids, anyhow, and he reckons the doctor "ain't a bad poor something, after all!"
"No drops or tabloids or anything of that kind?" "Certainly not; the medicines were kept in my room."
gloss: A compact or compressed version of something; especially something having a popular or sensational nature.
pos: noun
tags: figuratively
examples: This boat Mayfay has been admirable as a tabloid cruiser and while Sure Mike is about her same size, Sure Mike is far more nicely modeled; she will not have Mayfay's 17-mile-an-hour homespun plainness.
gloss: A compact or compressed version of something; especially something having a popular or sensational nature.
pos: noun
tags: figuratively
examples: […] Lyle Stuart, […] is known—notorious would be the proper word—for his publishing and writing in the fields of obscenity and extreme leftism: he puts out a sort of tabloid called "The Independent".
A public school in Moperville, where the local newspaper is sold in neighboring towns with all the regard of a tabloid. / We've got a reputation to protect! We can only report on confirmed monsters, like mega hogs, or Bigfoot!
Train operating companies get plenty of column inches in the tabloids, usually for negative reasons. Happily, Southeastern is worthy of praise for having made The Sun for something positive.
gloss: A compact or compressed version of something; especially something having a popular or sensational nature.
pos: noun
tags: Canada
US
figuratively
gloss: In the form of a tabloid (noun senses 2 and 2.2): compressed or compact in size.
pos: adj
tags: not-comparable
examples: Travellers, explorers and missionaries are enabled to carry the most effective medicines in the smallest possible space by using ‘Tabloid’ Medicine cases as supplied to [Henry Morton] Stanley and to all leading expeditions. ‘Tabloid’ medicines contain absolutely accurate doses of the purest drugs, require neither weighing nor measuring, and retain their activity after exposure to the most trying climates.
[T]he flints of the plateau drifts are neither 'slabs' nor 'tablets,' they are of all shapes from rounded Eocene to hardly worn and sub-angular pebbles, differing but little from the mean of a score of Palaeolithic gravels. This presumed tabloid condition is bought about by a presumed 'Extreme Cold'; which, of course, is warmed into sunshine by the light of actual fact.
Wares other than drugs for compounding prescriptions are being brought in; tabloid medicines are being introduced, proprietary and other goods are coming in, and toilet and fancy articles of limited amounts are being displayed.
"The Dairy Maid," an alleged song, is really a recitation; a sort of tabloid sentimental melodrama.
Even though people might like their science in cheap and absurd tabloid form, they did like it. The Potter press exulted in scientific discoveries made easy, but it was better than not exulting in them at all.
gloss: Resembling the style of journalism generally associated with a tabloid newspaper: appealing to unsophisticated people, sensational, etc.
pos: adj
tags: figuratively
not-comparable
examples: tabloid journalism
I watched your 6 o'clock news today; it's straight tabloid. You had a minute and a half of that lady riding a bike naked in Central Park; on the other hand, you had less than a minute of hard national and international news.
Risk is everywhere. From tabloid headlines insisting that coffee causes cancer (yesterday, of course, it cured it) to stern government warnings about alcohol and driving, the world is teeming with goblins. For each one there is a frighteningly precise measurement of just how likely it is to jump from the shadows and get you.
gloss: To express (something) in a compact or condensed manner, especially in the style of journalism generally associated with a tabloid newspaper (appealing to unsophisticated people, sensational, etc.).
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: This "tabloiding" of the latest fashions, we thought an excellent idea. Surely it's not the sole mission of a dry goods ad. to give news of bargains? Would not reliable information as to coming fashions be of equal interest to the average woman?
You won't have trouble recognizing some of the much-tabloided originals on whom characters are based—for example, the rather lonely figure of the Italian-American singer-actor-producer-and-great lover.
If Michael [Jordan] is upset, though, because the Chicago Sun-Times has tabloided his private life with the front-page headline, "So who gets the house?" he isn't saying.
gloss: To convert (a newspaper) into a tabloid (noun sense 2.2) format.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: The ‘tabloiding’ of local newspapers has resulted in a ‘dumbing down’ of the local press. The publication of shorter, brighter, ‘frothier’ stories and the increasing reliance on stories about entertainment, consumer items and ‘human interest’ stories, are the infallible hallmarks of the tabloid genre.
The first key developments in the tabloiding of British newspapers are defined initially and literally by the shift of the Sun to a tabloid format in 1969 and the Daily Mail in 1971.
Related words: yellow press
Derived words: antitabloid
broadloid
tab
tabloidese
tabloidesque
tabloidish
tabloidism
tabloidization
tabloidize
tabloidlike
tabloidy
tabloid talk show
Translations:
lang: Finnish
word: tiivistetty muoto