The garettes aboven the ghates bryght
Of the ceté of heven, I lyken thus ryght
Tylle the garettes of a ceté of gold,
That wroght war als I before told.
Richard Rolle de Hampole, Pricke of Conscience, 9101-9104.
It is nat possible algate to have highe garettes, or toures, or highe places for watche men; therefor it nedethe to have out watche.—Vegetius, quoted in Way’s Promptorium, p. 187.
Gazette. The French form of an Italian word ‘gazzetta,’ designating a small piece of tin money current at Venice, of the value of less than a farthing (see Florio). This word ‘gazzetta’ may possibly be quite distinct in origin from ‘gazzetta,’ the name of a monthly bill of news printed commonly at Venice (see Skeat’s Dictionary). We see the word in this latter sense, but not as yet thoroughly at home in English, for it still retains [as it retained much later] an Italian termination, in Ben Jonson’s Volpone (act v. sc. 2), of which the scene is laid at Venice. Curiously enough the same play gives also an example, quoted below, of ‘gazette’ in the sense of a coin.
If you will have a stool, it will cost you a gazet, which is almost a penny.—Coryat, Crudities, vol. ii. p. 15.
What monstrous and most painful circumstance
Is here to get some three or four gazets,