English undefil'd," the confusion of ideas could not be more complete.

Indeed, I very much doubt whether our word "News" contains the idea of
"new" at all. It is used with us to mean intelligence and the phrases,
"Is there any thing new?" and "Is there any news?" present, in my
opinion, two totally distinct ideas to the English mind in its ordinary
mechanical action. "Intelligence" is not necessarily "new", nor indeed
is "News:" in the oldest dictionary I possess, Baret's _Alvearie_, 1573,
I find "Olde newes or stale newes." A.E.B. is very positive that "news"
is plural, and he cites the "Cardinal of York" to prove it. All that I
can say is, that I think the Cardinal of York was wrong: and A.E.B.
thought so too, when his object was not to confound me, as may be seen
by his own practice in bloc concluding paragraph of his
communication:--"The _newes_ WAS of the victory," &c. The word "means,"
on the other hand, is beyond all dispute plural. What says Shakspeare?

"Yet nature is made letter by no mean
But nature makes that mean."

The plural was formed by the addition of "_s_:" yet from the infrequent
use of the word except in the plural, the singular form has become
obsolete, and the same form applies now to both numbers. Those who would
apply this reasoning to "News," forget that there is the slight
difficulty of the absence of the _noun_ "new" to start from.

I do not feel bound to furnish proof of so obvious a fact, that many of
the most striking similarities in language are mere coincidences. Words
derived from the same root, and retaining the same meaning, frequently
present the most dissimilar appearance, as "evêque" and "bishop;" and
the most distant roots frequently meet in the same word. When your