Tablet

Incidentally, “tabloid” was originally formed as a trademarked term for medicine tablets in 1884 by Burroughs, Wellcome, & Co., a British pharmaceutical company, by combining “tablet” with the suffix “oid” (usually used in scientific contexts to signify “having the form of”). By the 1890s, “tabloid” was in general use meaning “a concentrated version of something.” When newspapers appeared at the beginning of the 20th century having pages half the size of the standard “broadsheet” and featuring popular and often sensationalist news stories, the name “tabloid” for the journalistic genre was a natural fit (“Go into any bus or train or lunch room at any hour of the day or night and you see men and boys and women and girls taking and enjoying their tabloids,” 1901).

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