How an Arabic storehouse became a shop in Paris, a gunpowder store, and the magazine you read. Tap ▶ to hear each step read aloud.
This word is not Indo-European: it comes from the Semitic family. The Arabic root kh-z-n means to store, to keep safe.
From it came khazna, a treasury.
A makhzan (plural makhāzin) was a storehouse, a warehouse, full of goods from ships and caravans.
Mediterranean traders took the word to Italy, magazzino (a warehouse), and to France, magasin, which in French now means a shop. English took magazine in the 1580s for a warehouse.
Soon the most important storehouse was the one for gunpowder and weapons: a powder magazine.
Today the part of a gun that holds the bullets is still called the magazine.
In 1731, a London publisher called his new monthly collection of articles The Gentleman’s Magazine: a storehouse of news, poems and stories. It was the first magazine.
Today: a magazine is a paper or online publication full of articles and pictures.
| magasin (French) | a shop |
| almacén (Spanish) | a store, from al-makhzan |
| Makhzen (Morocco) | the royal government, “the treasury” |
French has both: un magasin (a shop, the old storehouse) and un magazine, borrowed back from English for the publication.
“A magazine is a storehouse of stories.”