The article deals with the oldest Polish texts which served as means of social communication. The phenomenon of informing and shaping public opinion through the use of short written forms was born in western Europe in the 15th century and developed in the following century thanks to the invention of print. It made its appearance in Poland several years later and initially was limited to translating information sheets published in other European cities. This is why press issues were modelled on foreign sources on both the formal and linguistic level. The first information texts published in Poland in the period between the 16th and 17th centuries were short prints of a few pages called nowiny (newssheets). This term was a direct link to the Latin Nova newspapers circulating in Europe, although the word itself had been used in the Old Polish language. The end of the 17th century witnessed the change of the genre s name to wiadomości (news, plural), which may have stemmed from semantic alterations. The lexeme nowina took the meaning of an unconfirmed report, rumour , while the meaning of wiadomość (news, singular) was narrowed down to confirmed, factual information . Frequent use of this word in the first regular press publications contributed to identifying the lexeme wiadomość with information about the most important events in the minds of the readers, whereas the ongoing professionalization of the press in the 18th and 19th centuries led to the formation of the basic information genre of wiadomość prasowa (press news).