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Glite Dictionary
📰 British press 🗺️ A London street
Fleet Street

Fleet Street

1 4.4
A name for the national newspapers and journalists in Britain
  • noun
  • Literature
translation icon : prensa británica
  • And so you have these two competing information marketplaces, Fleet Street, free fall and regulated BBC.
  • Fleet Street editor
  • London's Fleet Street
  • Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Examples

  • Bolt Court, Fleet Street, June 19, 1783.

    Blog text (28)

  • While Tim Burton eventually scratched his musical itch with 2007's "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street," it appears at one time he had an even more ambitious plan in mind.

    Blog text (8)

  • Only the Times in Fleet Street could boast a more modern facility.

    Fiction book (1990)

  • His name's Maurice Bloom, and he has an office somewhere off Fleet Street.

    Fiction book (1996)

  • The former Fleet Street editor added: "I feel that the reason these women never came forward before was nobody would have believed them because Jimmy Savile raised so much money for charity."

    Blog text (28)

  • We had taken no more than a few steps when a young Fleet Street man, notepad at the ready (Gads, they seemed to be everywhere he went in those days), accosted us.

    Fiction book (1990)

  • Cockburn also observed this pattern in relation to London's Fleet Street compositors; see her Brothers, 44. See also Oldenziel, Making Technology Masculine, 59, for a parallel in engineering.

    Academic text (2016)

  • Journalists and editors from Fleet Street have a significant influence on public opinion in the UK.

  • The scandal involving the politician was heavily covered by Fleet Street newspapers.

  • When it comes to breaking news, no one does it better than Fleet Street reporters.

How Influential

Fleet Street
  • Literature
1 4.4
public press
  • Literature
1 3.2
newspaper
  • Literature
629 1.0
hyperlocal
  • Literature
1 7.1

Surface Forms

Fleet Street singular

Morphology

Fleet + street

This is a metonymic place name: the meaning 'the British national press' arises from historical association with a particular street, not from composing 'fleet' (a group) + 'street' (a road). Even a learner who knows the constituent words would not predict the industry-wide meaning without cultural/historical knowledge, so the expression is opaque.

Etymology

Fleet Street became a short way to talk about 'the British press' because for many years most national newspapers and reporters worked on that street, so people used the street name to mean the newspapers as a whole.