Magazine

How to spell magazine

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce magazine

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does magazine mean?

1. nounA regularly published collection of articles, photographs and advertisements, usually issued weekly or monthly.
2. nounThe detachable container that holds and feeds cartridges into a firearm.
3. nounA building or compartment used for storing explosives, ammunition or military supplies.

Magazine in a sentence

• She renewed her subscription to the gardening magazine for another year.

• The soldier loaded a fresh magazine before the training drill.

• The old fort still had a stone powder magazine near the harbour wall.

• The dentist's waiting room had a stack of out-of-date travel magazine copies.

• Safety rules require that the magazine be removed before cleaning the rifle.

• Workers were forbidden to smoke anywhere near the magazine.

Where does magazine come from?

Language of origin: Arabic

This word traces back to the Arabic makhzan, meaning 'storehouse' or 'depot', from the verb khazana 'to store up'. Its plural makhazin passed into Italian as magazzino and into French as magasin, both still meaning a warehouse or shop. English borrowed it in the late 1500s, first for a military storehouse and then specifically for a place where gunpowder and ammunition were kept, a sense that survives in the cartridge-holding magazine of a rifle. In the 1700s writers began using it figuratively for a 'storehouse of information', so a printed collection of articles became a magazine, and that periodical sense is now the everyday one. The spelling keeps its French shape with the -ine ending and the single z, which is the main thing to remember, since the word is built on store, not on a doubled letter.

How the word is built

• magaz- (from Arabic makhzan: storehouse)
• -ine (noun-forming ending via French)