Language Matters | How magazine, whose Arabic root word means storehouse, came to denote a periodical
- Magazine derives from the Arabic for ‘to store up’; first used figuratively to describe a published store of articles in 1731, it stuck
A Sunday pleasure for many of you, dear readers, surely involves a leisurely perusal of this magazine – turning the pages of the physical copy at your breakfast table, or, still in bed, scrolling through online.
If your household happens to include a teen boy, their weekend may be magazine-strewn, too – feeding ammo into their firearms in online shooting games.
The origins of “magazine” at first glance appear quite different from either of those definitions – tracing to the Arabic, makhzan “storehouse, granary”, with plural makhāzin, from the root khazana “to store up”.
The language contact responsible harks back to the early Islamic conquests, and its spread and influence of Arabic culture and language across Europe, Africa and Asia, particularly during the Islamic golden age of the 10th to the 14th centuries.
The earliest known records of makhāzin in a European language are the Latin magazenum “storeroom” in 1228 at the seaport of Marseilles, and the Italian magazzino, recorded from 1348.
Meanwhile, in the Muslim-ruled Iberian Peninsula, the Andalusian Arabic al-makhzan entered Spanish as almacén. The Italian magazzino was the source of the 15th century French magasin “warehouse, depot, store”.
From there the word entered English, documented in 1451; this original sense in English is now obsolete.
