The term gazette normally refers to a newspaper.

The word comes from gazzetta, a Venetian coin used to buy early Italian newspapers; the coin became a name for the papers themselves. The word was loaned into English to describe a newspaper.

"Gazette" came to be used for an official government paper with the creation of the London Gazette, first published in 1665 under the title of The Oxford Gazette. This was one of the first publications in the world that could be termed a "newspaper". The Edinburgh Gazette came into existence in 1699, the Dublin Gazette in 1705, and the Belfast Gazette first appeared in 1921, the Iris Oifigiúil of the Irish Free State in 1922.

In some countries, publication in the official gazette (also called public journal) is a condition for official documentation to come into force. This includes release in the public domain, for example The Royal Gazette of Thailand.

"Gazette", by extension, has come to be used as the name of mainstream newspapers in the print media, such as the Montreal Gazette (for others in this genre, see The Gazette). In some languages, like Russian, "gazette" has formed the basis for the standard term "newspaper" (e.g. gazeta).

The word "gazette" is also used as a transitive verb, meaning to announce or publish in a gazette: "Lake Nakuru was gazetted as a bird sanctuary in 1960, then was upgraded to National Park status in 1968." Commissions, promotions of officers, and decorations in the British Army are gazetted in the London Gazette as the "Official Newspaper of Record for the United Kingdom".