News lacks plural but what about TIDINGS?

News is used only in the singular (being one of the uncountable nouns). There is an old-fashioned word meaning pretty much the same - tidings, so my question is:

• Is this expression used only in its plural form?

Its singular form exists, yes. But I have never seen expressions with

I have a tiding for you
or
The good tiding

even though the singular form, as Dan Bron noted, exists in dictionaries.

Solution 1:

As for it's contemporary usage, I have nothing to add. But historically, the singular form of “tidings” is simply “tidings” (not “tiding”), per, for example, Shakespeare, and others since, but it doesn't seem to have been used this way for the last hundred years or so. See the following entry from Josephine Tucker Baker's Correct English, how to Use it: A Complete Grammar (1907, Sadler-Rowe):

The following nouns, although plural in form, are regarded as singular, and, hence, are followed by singular verbs: Amends, news, tidings, summons, gallows, politics, physics, optics, mathematics.

But she adds:

Tidings is often plural (these tidings).

There’s also this from the entry in Webster’s Revised Unabridged (1913):

Note: Although tidings is plural in form, it has been used also as a singular. By Shakespeare it was used indiscriminately as a singular or plural. Now near the tidings of our comfort is. (Shakespeare)

This was intriguing tidings to me.

...

And why not end with more examples from Shakespeare?

This sword but shown to Caesar, with this tidings, // Shall enter me with him.

That's the worst tidings that I hear of yet.

The gods rebuke me, but it is tidings // To wash the eyes of kings.

Solution 2:

This indicates that the word "tiding" is much rarer in written works than "tidings".

Whilst this proves nothing, when you take into consideration that 'tiding' is also the collective noun for magpies and a form of the verb "tide", the use of 'tiding' as the singular form of 'tidings' is likely to be negligible.