| The word "news" has the following history, quoted from the American
Heritage Dictionary, Third Edition:
WORD HISTORY: If you take the first letters of the directions
North, East, West, and South, it is true that you have the letters
of the word news, but it is not true that you have the etymology of
news, contrary to what has often been thought. The history of the
word is much less clever than this and not at all unexpected. News
is simply the plural of the noun new, which we use, for example, in
the adage "Out with the old, in with the new." The first recorded
user of this plural to mean "tidings" may have been James I of
Scotland; a work possibly written by him around 1437 contains the
words "Awak . . . I bring The [thee] newis [news] glad." It is
pleasant to see that the first news was good. However, his
descendant James I of England is the first person recorded (1616)
to have said "No newis is better than evill newis," or as we would
put it, "No news is good news."
The word "new" itself derives through Middle English, from Old English
"niwe," from Old High German "niuwf," from Latin "novus." The Latin is
either cognate with or derived from the Greek "neos."
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| And as for "vixen," well, a vixen is a female fox, and the word "fox"
is a slang term for an attractive young person (of either sex). It
follows that a vixen could be an attractive woman.
But the more usual usage means a woman who is nasty-tempered, probably
because real foxes can be very nasty indeed when disturbed.
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| I seem to recall that the French word for news is nouvels or nouvelles
(I forgot which), and that the singular form is used for a report of
a single new. Obviously this is from Nord, OUest, Vraiment, Est, et
peut-etre Le Sud.
The Japanese word for news is nyuuzu, from the words for enter and
vinegar.
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