Old news about "news" and dog-powered machines.

In the 19th century, there were lots of inventions like this:



I discovered that as a result of having looked up the word "news" in the Oxford English Dictionary and run across this sentence in Richard Burton's 1621 book "Anatomy of Melancholy": "As a horse in a mill, a dog in a wheele, they run around without alteration or newes." I could picture working horses harnessed to a mill, trudging around in a circle, but what was the corresponding situation for a dog?

How about a dog-powered car?



The reason I was looking up the word "news" was that it was the last word in today's Gatsby sentence, and Meade, reading what I wrote, asserted that "news" was a word that dated back to the early days of movie newsreels and was an acronym for "north, east, west, south." No way, I said, dashing into the OED for confirmation. The idea of the pluralizing the word for "new" to mean news, is quite old, much older than English:

Spec. use of plural of new n., after Middle French nouvelles (see novel n.), or classical Latin nova new things, in post-classical Latin also news (from late 13th cent. in British sources), use as noun of neuter plural of novus new (compare classical Latin rēs nova (feminine singular) a new development, a fresh turn of events).

Meanwhile, Meade found a Snopes item, which established a pedigree for the misconception.