Other forms: coverages
Coverage is the amount and kind of reporting a subject gets. Media coverage, live coverage, extensive coverage.
Blanket coverage means everywhere at once, and the phrase the coverage of something is a standard way of talking about how a story was handled rather than what happened. In insurance, coverage is what a policy pays for — the American term where British English says cover. In telecommunications, coverage is where a signal reaches: mobile coverage, a coverage map.
1nouncoverageThe amount and kind of reporting a subject gets.
“The election got wall-to-wall coverage on every news channel.”
2nounareaThe area a signal or service reaches.
“There is no coverage at all in that valley.”
coverage is an extent of reporting or reach.
The word is cover plus -age, a French ending that turns a verb into a noun of result. Cover comes through French from Latin cooperire, to cover over, which is also the source of curfew's cuevre.
Middle English
coveren
English
cover
English, today
coverage
Built from
From cover + -age. From cover + -age. 1912. Compare Middle English coverage (“a charge for having or stall or booth at a fair”). cover comes from Middle English coveren. From Middle English coveren, borrowed from Old French covrir (modern French couvrir), from Latin coperire, from Latin cooperiō (“to cover completely”), from co- + operiō (“to close, cover”). Displaced native Middle English thecchen and bithecchen (“to cover”) (from Old English þeccan, beþeccan (“to cover”)), Middle English helen (“to cover, conceal”) (from Old English helan (“to conceal, cover, hide”)), Middle English wreon (“to cover”) (from Old English wreon (“to cover”)), Middle English hodren (“to cover up”) (from Low German hudren (“to cover up”)). According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the original sense of the verb and noun cover was “hide from view” as in its cognate covert. Except in the limited sense of “cover again”, the word recover is unrelated and is cognate with recuperate. Cognate with Spanish cubrir and Portuguese cobrir.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA