gazetteer

noun

1. (archaic, historical)A person who writes for a gazette or newspaper; a journalist; (specifically) a journalist engaged by a government.

   “Mount novv to Gallo-belgicus: Appeare / As deepe as a States-man, as a Gazettier.”

   “Did I tell you I have made Ford Gazetteer, with two hundred pounds a year salary, besides perquisites.”

   “So—Satire is no more—I feel it die— / No Gazeteer more innocent than I!”

   “[Richard] Steele had been appointed Gazetteer by Sunderland [i.e., Charles Spencer, 3rd Earl of Sunderland, Secretary of State for the Southern Department], at the request, it is said, of [Joseph] Addison; and thus had access to foreign intelligence earlier and more authentic than was in those times within the reach of an ordinary news-writer.”

   “Within a week, the amazed Gazetteers (Newspaper Editors we now call them) can behold the actual advent of horse, foot and artillery regiments at Magdeburg; actual rendezvous begun, and with a frightful equable velocity going on day after day.”

2. (broadly, obsolete)A gazette, a newspaper.

   “The Hoſt look'd ſtedfaſtly at Adams, and after a Minute's ſilence aſked him "if he vvas one of the VVriters of the Gazetteers? for I have heard," ſays he, "they are vvrit by Parſons." "Gazetteers!" anſvvered Adams. "What is that?" "It is a dirty Nevvs-Paper," replied the Hoſt, "vvhich hath been given avvay all over the Nation for theſe many Years to abuſe Trade and honeſt Men, vvhich I vvould not ſuffer to lie on my Table, tho' it hath been offered me for nothing."”

   “Confus'd above, / Glaſſes and bottles, pipes and gazetteers, / As if the table even itſelf vvas drunk, / Lie a vvet broken ſcene; […]”

   “All the common-place lamentations upon the decay of trade, the encreaſe of taxes, and the high price of labour and proviſions, are here retailed again and again in the ſame tone vvith vvhich they have dravvled through columns of Gazetteers and Advertiſers for a century together.”

3. (transitive)A dictionary or index of geographical locations.

   “The kind Reception the Gazetteer has met vvith in the VVorld, manifeſted by the ſeveral Editions that have been of it, vvithin the compaſs of a fevv Years; and indeed, the Conveniency of a Compendious Undertaking of this kind, have induced us to go on vvith a ſecond Part, comprehending the other three Quarters of the VVorld, viz. Aſia, Africa and America; ſince the firſt had confin'd it ſelf entirely vvithin the Boundaries of Europe.”

   “The "Polyolbion" [by Michael Drayton] is nothing less than a versified gazetteer of England and Wales,—fortunately Scotland was not yet annexed, or the poem would have been even longer, and already it is the plesiosaurus of verse. Mountains, rivers, and even marshes are personified, to narrate historical episodes, or to give us geographical lectures.”

   “This is the first volume of a gazetteer which is now being published. It may be looked upon as the very latest authority.”

   “According to a gazetteer of 1662 called Edo meisho ki, the Ōji Inari Shrine was the "big boss" (sō-tsukasa) of all the Inari shrines around Tokyo. […] Other gazetteers of the period preserve a story holding that on the last day of the year, innumerable foxes would gather at a certain mulberry tree to worship at the shrine, making foxfire, which could be seen from Edo.”

4. (broadly, transitive)A similar descriptive list (often alphabetical) of information on other subjects.

   “[A]ll the brighter stars of the sky are registered in their true relations one to another, on charts and photographic plates. […] When a higher precision is required, one must consult those gazetteers of the sky known as star catalogues.”

   “The mountain was McKinley. At twenty thousand feet, it was a third lower than Everest but, in the gazetteers of mountaineering, was highly prized because its rise from plain to peak – what climbers call the 'uplift', a technical description with a metaphor hiding behind it – is greater than that of the Nepalese skyscraper.”

   “Statistical gazetteers of the time that were written explicitly for merchants, such as Timothy Pitkin's Statistical View, were filled with pages of international import and export data but included only a few, rather meager population tables.”

   “Unlike other prehistoric processes, there is no comprehensive gazetteer of radiocarbon dates for the entire Bell Beaker phenomenon apart from a few high-quality regional datasets[…].”

verb

1. (transitive)Synonym of gazette (“to announce the status of (someone) in an official gazette”).

   “[A]s an old friend I've got one favour to beg and to request to be granted. […] Why, when you've been gazetteered as Sir Robert and Lady Smugglefuss, that I shall be the first to be honoured with a visit.”

   “But the change was at hand, and two new major-generals and six brigadier-generals were gazetteered to the anxious country.”

   “Gazetteered as Lieutenant-Commander, he [Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh] was now twenty-nine years old, about the age when he might have expected such promotion. No sign there of favouritism or nepotism, though his unrivalled connections had hardly held him back.”

2. (archaic, transitive)To report about (someone) in a gazette or newspaper.

   “[O]ur modern canibals of the gazetteering tribe, leſs delicate than they, can divert themſelves in cool blood vvith the pangs of their friends, and exert their more licentious brutality amidſt the miſeries of nations in ſtrict alliance vvith their ovvn;—if ſuch inſects can be deem'd of any nation.”

   “Patience, it will be our turn by and by, we shall have the honour of being Gazetteered in our place, at least I expect a whole paragraph in the 'Evening Post' for my own share.”

3. (transitive)To describe the geography of (a country or other place) in a gazetteer (etymology 2, noun etymology 2, noun sense 1).

   “Such a cosmopolitan collection of post-marks is seldom made. They have a conventional range, from Buckingham Palace and Osborne, through university towns, scholars' libraries, remote parishes in Scotland, the seats of power in British India, to places Down East, and towns at the West not yet gazetteered; […]”

   “Neither of them could make poetry coalesce with gazetteering or chronicle-making. It was like trying to put a declaration of love into the forms of a declaration in trover.”

   “[…] Wressley went back to the Foreign Office and his "Wajahs," a compiling, gazetteering, report-writing hack, who would have been dear at three hundred rupees a month.”

   “[…] Peter Underwood […] has carefully and systematically gazetteered ghosts throughout Britain.”

   “I have a lease, Captain. I paid you a thousand dollars. The river is even gazetteered in my name.”