Tass — often written all in capitals, TASS — was the official news agency of the Soviet Union. A news agency is a company that gathers news and sells it on to newspapers and TV stations, the way Reuters or the Associated Press do. What made Tass different is that it belonged to the state, so what it reported was what the government wanted reported. During the Cold War, Western papers would print 'according to Tass' as a careful way of saying: this is the Soviet official line, believe it or not as you choose. That is how the word usually turns up in English — in history books, old news reports, and spy novels, rather than in speech today. The Soviet Union ended in 1991; a Russian agency of the same name still exists, and after some years under another name it went back to calling itself TASS. The letters stand for a Russian phrase meaning roughly 'Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union'. Note that the origin notes attached to this entry are for an unrelated old English word 'tass' meaning a heap or a small cup — nothing to do with the news agency, which is simply a set of Russian initials.