Other forms: tabloids
A tabloid is a newspaper of scandals, celebrities and large headlines. The tabloid press, a tabloid story, tabloid journalism.
The word began as a page size — half a broadsheet — and became a description of the content, so much so that broadsheets which shrank had to insist they were compact rather than tabloid. Tabloid journalism is a criticism. Note that the word was originally a trademark for a compressed medicine tablet, and it came to mean anything condensed before it meant a newspaper.
1nountabloidA newspaper of scandals and large headlines.
“The tabloids printed photos of the singer's wedding on their front pages.”
tabloid is a kind of newspaper.
Tabloid was registered in 1884 as a trademark for compressed tablets, from tablet plus -oid. It came to mean anything condensed, and then the small-format newspaper.
Middle English
tablet
English
tablet
English, today
tabloid
Built from
From tablet + -oid. The noun is derived from tabl(et) + -oid, originally coined by Burroughs, Wellcome & Company as a brand name for their medicines and other products such as tea in tablet form and registered as a trademark on 14 March 1884. compact thing is influenced by newspaper. tablet comes from Middle English tablet. From Middle English tablet, from Old French tablete (Modern French tablette), diminutive of table (“table”). Compare table, -et.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA