[f. JOURNAL sb. + -IST. Cf. F. journaliste (Dict. Acad., 1718).]
1. One who earns his living by editing or writing for a public journal or journals.
1693. Humours Town, 78. Epistle-Writer, or Jurnalists, Mercurists.
1710. Toland, Refl. Sacheverell, 16. They [the Tories] have one Lesley for their Journalist in London, who for Seven or Eight Years past did, three Times a week, Publish Rebellion.
1812. L. Hunt, in Examiner, 30 Aug., 545/1. The congratulations of friends and brother-journalists.
1898. Times, 18 Oct., 13/5. The writer [Mary H. Krout] is a ‘newspaper woman’—which is, she tells us, ‘the preferred American substitute for the more polite English term “lady journalist.”’
attrib. 1881. Saintsbury, Dryden, v. 103. As we should put it in these days, he [Dryden] had the journalist spirit.
2. One who journalizes or keeps a journal.
1712. Addison, Spect., No. 323, ¶ 2. My following correspondent … is such a Journalist as I require…. Her Journal … is only the picture of a Life filled with a fashionable kind of Gaiety and Laziness.
1775. Mickle, Dissert. Lusiad, App. (R.). The force … is thus … described by Hernan Lopez de Castaneda, a contemporary writer, and careful journalist of facts.
1828. Webster, Journalist, the writer of a journal or diary.
1848. in Craig; and in mod. Dicts.
