Journal

How to spell journal

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce journal

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does journal mean?

1. nounA written record of personal experiences, observations, or daily events.
2. nounA periodical publication, especially a scholarly or professional one covering a particular field.
3. nounA book or ledger in which financial transactions are recorded as they occur.

Journal in a sentence

• She kept a travel journal during the entire trip across Italy.

• Her research was published in a respected medical journal.

• The bookkeeper entered every sale into the accounting journal.

• He wrote in his journal every night before going to sleep.

• The university library subscribes to hundreds of academic journal titles.

• Each transaction must be logged in the journal before it reaches the ledger.

Where does journal come from?

Language of origin: French

The word comes from the Old French journal, meaning 'daily', which descended from the Latin diurnalis, an adjective built on diurnus, 'of the day' or 'daily', itself from dies, the Latin word for 'day'. In medieval use a journal first named a service book that set out the prayers for each part of the day, and later it came to mean a daily record of events or transactions. English borrowed it in the 1300s, and over time the sense broadened from a strict day-by-day diary to any periodical or scholarly publication. The same dies root survives in 'diary', 'diurnal', and even 'sojourn', which originally meant to spend a day somewhere. The unexpected 'jour' spelling, which sounds like the French word for 'day', is the part that trips writers up, since it does not match the way the word is pronounced in English.

How the word is built

• journ- (from Latin diurnus: daily)
• -al (noun suffix)