News is fresh information about what is happening. Watch the news, good news, breaking news.
It is uncountable and takes a singular verb — the news is on at six — which catches learners out because it looks plural. A single item is a piece of news or a news story. Note no news is good news; break the news, meaning to tell somebody something difficult; and that news values, meaning what makes something newsworthy, is a genuine field of study and explains a great deal about what you see.
1nounnewsFresh information about what is happening.~76%
“The news came through at about four in the afternoon.”
2nounbroadcastA broadcast or publication reporting events.~24%
“The news is on at six and again at ten.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 17 sentences found in the wild and placed 17 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
news is fresh information.
News is the plural of new, used as a noun — new things. The often-repeated claim that it stands for north, east, west and south is a later invention and entirely false, which makes it a nice example of a folk etymology in the wild.
Middle English
newes
English, today
news
Built from
From Middle English newes, newys (“new things”), equivalent to new + s. Compare stq Näis (“news”), East Frisian näjs (“news”), West Frisian nijs (“news”), Dutch nieuws (“news”), German Low German Neeis (“new things; news”), though, unlike the English word, those s originated as s, not as s. Sometimes erroneously claimed to be an acronym of "North, East, West, South" or "Noteworthy Events, Weather, Sports".
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA