SAMUEL HICKSON.

St. John’s Wood, May 27. 1850.

I do not know the reason for the rule your correspondent Mr. S. HICKSON lays down, that such a noun as “news” could not be formed according to English analogy.  Why not as well as “goods, the shallows, blacks, for mourning, greens?” There is no singular to any of these as nouns.

Noise is a French word, upon which Menage has an article.  There can be no doubt that he and others whom he quotes are right, that it is derived from noxa or noxia in Latin, meaning “strife.”  They quote:—­

  “Saepe in conjugiis fit noxia, cum nimia est dos.”

Ausonius.

  “In mediam noxiam perfertur.”

Petronius.

  “Diligerent alia, et noxas bellumque moverent.”

Manilius.

It is a great pity that we have no book of reference for English analogy of language.

C.B.

Why should Mr. Hickson (Vol. i., p. 428.) attempt to derive “news” indirectly from a German adjective, when it is so directly attributable to an English one; and that too without departing from a practice almost indigenous in the language?

Have we not in English many similar adjective substantives?  Are we not continually slipping into our shorts, or sporting our tights, or parading our heavies, or counter-marching our lights, or commiserating blacks, or leaving whites to starve; or calculating the odds, or making expositions for goods?

Oh! but, says Mr. Hickson, “in that case the ‘s’ would be the sign of the plural.”  Not necessarily so, no more than an “s” to “mean” furnishes a “means” of proving the same thing.  But granting that it were so, what then?  The word “news” is undoubtedly plural, and has been so used from the earliest times; as (in the example I sent for publication last week, of so early a date as the commencement of Henry VIII.’s reign) may be seen in “thies new_es_.”

But a flight still more eccentric would be the identification of “noise” with “news!” “There is no process,” Mr. Hickson says, “by which noise could be manufactured without making a plural noun of it!”

Is not Mr. Hickson aware that la noise is a French noun-singular signifying a contention or dispute? and that the same word exists in the Latin nisus, a struggle?

If mere plausibility be sufficient ground to justify a derivation, where is there a more plausible one than that “news,” intelligence, ought to be derived from [Greek:  nous], understanding or common sense?

A.E.B.

Leeds, May 5th.

Further evidence (see Vol. i., p. 369.) of the existence and common use of the word “newes” in its present signification but ancient orthography anterior to the introduction of newspapers.

In a letter from the Cardinal of York (Bainbridge) to Henry VIII.  (Rymer’s Foedera, vol. vi. p. 50.),