tabloid

noun

1. (archaic)A small, compressed portion of a chemical, drug, food substance, etc.; a pill, a tablet.

   “One of the compartments was found to contain some forty compressed tabloids, which on analysis proved to be potassium bromide.”

   “A large number of tabloids are contained in a very small bottle, and only require crushing and dissolving in the stated quantity of water to produce a large volume of solution.”

   “‘It's those tabloids!’ Conroy stamped his foot feebly as he blew his nose. ‘They’ve knocked me out.’”

   “You have a couple of thousand pounds in exchequer bills, 50,000 shares worth tenpence a dozen, and half a dozen tabloids of cyanide of potassium to poison yourself with when you are found out.”

   “"Crook in the guts," he says tersely. The picturesque reports of previously-treated and disgusted patients have left him doubtful, and he casts an anathematising eye upon the "Black Jack" bottle. "Tabloids and duty!" says the doctor, and the sufferer sighs with relief. There's no taste in tabloids, anyhow, and he reckons the doctor "ain't a bad poor something, after all!"”

2. (figuratively)A compact or compressed version of something; especially something having a popular or sensational nature.

   “This boat Mayfay has been admirable as a tabloid cruiser and while Sure Mike is about her same size, Sure Mike is far more nicely modeled; she will not have Mayfay's 17-mile-an-hour homespun plainness.”

3. (figuratively)A compact or compressed version of something; especially something having a popular or sensational nature.

   “[…] Lyle Stuart, […] is known—notorious would be the proper word—for his publishing and writing in the fields of obscenity and extreme leftism: he puts out a sort of tabloid called "The Independent".”

   “A public school in Moperville, where the local newspaper is sold in neighboring towns with all the regard of a tabloid. / We've got a reputation to protect! We can only report on confirmed monsters, like mega hogs, or Bigfoot!”

   “Train operating companies get plenty of column inches in the tabloids, usually for negative reasons. Happily, Southeastern is worthy of praise for having made The Sun for something positive.”

4. (Canada, US, figuratively)A compact or compressed version of something; especially something having a popular or sensational nature.

adj

1. (not-comparable)In the form of a tabloid (noun senses 2 and 2.2): compressed or compact in size.

   “Travellers, explorers and missionaries are enabled to carry the most effective medicines in the smallest possible space by using ‘Tabloid’ Medicine cases as supplied to [Henry Morton] Stanley and to all leading expeditions. ‘Tabloid’ medicines contain absolutely accurate doses of the purest drugs, require neither weighing nor measuring, and retain their activity after exposure to the most trying climates.”

   “[T]he flints of the plateau drifts are neither 'slabs' nor 'tablets,' they are of all shapes from rounded Eocene to hardly worn and sub-angular pebbles, differing but little from the mean of a score of Palaeolithic gravels. This presumed tabloid condition is bought about by a presumed 'Extreme Cold'; which, of course, is warmed into sunshine by the light of actual fact.”

   “Wares other than drugs for compounding prescriptions are being brought in; tabloid medicines are being introduced, proprietary and other goods are coming in, and toilet and fancy articles of limited amounts are being displayed.”

   “"The Dairy Maid," an alleged song, is really a recitation; a sort of tabloid sentimental melodrama.”

   “Even though people might like their science in cheap and absurd tabloid form, they did like it. The Potter press exulted in scientific discoveries made easy, but it was better than not exulting in them at all.”

2. (figuratively, not-comparable)Resembling the style of journalism generally associated with a tabloid newspaper: appealing to unsophisticated people, sensational, etc.

   “tabloid journalism”

   “I watched your 6 o'clock news today; it's straight tabloid. You had a minute and a half of that lady riding a bike naked in Central Park; on the other hand, you had less than a minute of hard national and international news.”

   “Risk is everywhere. From tabloid headlines insisting that coffee causes cancer (yesterday, of course, it cured it) to stern government warnings about alcohol and driving, the world is teeming with goblins. For each one there is a frighteningly precise measurement of just how likely it is to jump from the shadows and get you.”

verb

1. (transitive)To express (something) in a compact or condensed manner, especially in the style of journalism generally associated with a tabloid newspaper (appealing to unsophisticated people, sensational, etc.).

   “This "tabloiding" of the latest fashions, we thought an excellent idea. Surely it's not the sole mission of a dry goods ad. to give news of bargains? Would not reliable information as to coming fashions be of equal interest to the average woman?”

   “You won't have trouble recognizing some of the much-tabloided originals on whom characters are based—for example, the rather lonely figure of the Italian-American singer-actor-producer-and-great lover.”

   “If Michael [Jordan] is upset, though, because the Chicago Sun-Times has tabloided his private life with the front-page headline, "So who gets the house?" he isn't saying.”

2. (transitive)To convert (a newspaper) into a tabloid (noun sense 2.2) format.

   “The ‘tabloiding’ of local newspapers has resulted in a ‘dumbing down’ of the local press. The publication of shorter, brighter, ‘frothier’ stories and the increasing reliance on stories about entertainment, consumer items and ‘human interest’ stories, are the infallible hallmarks of the tabloid genre.”

   “The first key developments in the tabloiding of British newspapers are defined initially and literally by the shift of the Sun to a tabloid format in 1969 and the Daily Mail in 1971.”