The Press

This just in.

Dear Word Detective: Do you know when we first started referring to the media or those working in journalism as “the press”? — Karen.

I sure do. Sometime around 1926. Next question. Just kidding. You don’t want a year — you want the whole story, and I’m here to give it to you. Actually, I’m here at the moment because the alternative seems to be replacing the screens on the sun porch, and my hand is still bandaged from the last time I tried that. Here’s a handy home repair tip for you folks: if the directions say “Then press the spline into the groove with the concave side of the tool,” you can save some time by calling 911 before you begin.

The noun “press” first appeared in English in the 13th century with the now-obsolete meaning of “a crowd; the condition of being crowded,” i.e., being “pressed upon” by a crowd of people. The appearance of the noun at that time was a bit odd in that the more general verb form, “to press,” defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “To act upon (a body) with a continuous force directed towards or against it,” didn’t show up in English until the 14th century. In any case, “press” is rooted in the Old French “presser,” which in turn derives from the Latin “pressare,” meaning, you guessed it, “to press.”

“Press” as a noun in English has acquired a wide variety of meanings over the past seven centuries, from the “press” that crushes grapes for wine to the “press” that puts a crease in trousers to the kind of “press” that weight-lifters brag about. In regard to journalism, we are, of course, talking about the printing press, invented in the 1450s by Johannes Gutenberg. Gutenberg’s invention transformed literature and eventually revolutionized education, leading to the spread of literacy and the evolution of newspapers, which, in turn, made it possible for millions of people around the world to follow the saga of Bat Boy in the National Enquirer. Hooray for Gutenberg!

The use of “the press” to mean “journalists” is an outgrowth of other figurative uses of the word, such as “press” meaning a publisher (today usually a small book publisher), “press” in the sense of the products of printing presses, especially “the coverage given to an issue or person in news reports” (“The lobbyist’s arrest has resulted in some bad press for several senators”), and “press” in such abstract phrases as “freedom of the press.” The leap in the early 20th century to using “the press” to mean either individual reporters or journalists as a group (“At least a half dozen times since the wedding the unfortunate composer has been badgered by the press….”, 1926) was thus a natural outgrowth of this figurative sense of “press.”