magazine
Pluralmagazines
- 1A nonacademic publication issued at regular intervals, containing articles by multiple writers on a broad topic or theme.
He subscribes to a science magazine that arrives every month.
Several travel magazines featured the same hidden beach this summer.
UsageYou read something in a magazine: an article in a travel magazine.
Similarperiodical
- 2A chamber, built into or attached to a firearm, that holds multiple rounds and feeds them into the firing mechanism.
The soldier reloaded by swapping in a full magazine.
Detachable magazines let shooters reload far more quickly than fixed designs.
Similarclip
- 3A building, room, or compartment, as on a warship, in which ammunition and explosives are stored.
The fort's magazine held enough powder to withstand a long siege.
An accidental fire reached the magazine and destroyed half the garrison.
UsageOften called a powder magazine, which keeps it clear of the periodical.
Note
Here the word stays closest to its roots. Middle French magasin meant "warehouse, store," from Italian magazzino. Behind both lies Arabic makhzan, "storehouse," from a verb meaning "to store, to lay up." An English form is recorded in 1451, and the word came into wider use in the 1580s. By Milton's Samson Agonistes (1671), armories and magazines stand side by side as the equipment of war.
Less common meanings
- 4A radio or television program whose episodes each combine a variety of features or segments, modeled on the format of a print magazine.
The channel's flagship current-affairs magazine runs for ninety minutes each Sunday.
Producers packed the evening magazine with interviews, cooking demos, and short documentaries.
UsageOften used before another noun: magazine format, a magazine program.
Note
Broadcasting borrowed the word along with the shape of the print periodical: one program, many short items under a single title. Gay Community News in 1977 describes a New York gay television hour running "in magazine format," with interviews, news and commentary. A magazine program is defined by its mix of segments, not by its subject.
- 5A storage chamber or reservoir in a device such as a stove, camera, or typesetting machine that holds a supply to be fed into it.
The projector's magazine fed slides automatically into the viewing gate.
The stove's coal magazine held enough fuel to keep the fire burning through the night.
- 6A region or country so rich in natural products that it serves as a storehouse of them.
UsageUsually followed by of and the produce or the place supplied: a magazine of metals, the magazine of the kingdom.
Note
An archaic figure of speech that pictures a whole country as a storehouse of what grows or lies in it. Most readers will think of the periodical first, so the context has to make the older meaning clear.
- 7A city viewed as a center of trade and marketing.
Note
The "rich country" meaning pictures land as a store of what it produces. This one pictures a city as a store of what passes through it to be bought and sold, as when an early eighteenth-century account of Dutch trade calls Malacca the magazine of the eastern trade.
- 8A place of business that keeps a stock of goods on hand to sell.
- 9A set of related Teletext pages bundled together within a broadcast service.
Most teletext "magazines" contain about 100 pages of information, typically including news headlines, weather reports, sports scores, video games, and stock prices.
1983, Channels of Communications
Practice
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Origin
At the root is Arabic ḵazana ("to store, to stock, to lay up"), from which came the noun of place maḵzan ("storeroom, storehouse"), plural maḵāzin. Italian made this magazzino ("storehouse"), Middle French magasin ("warehouse, store"), and Middle English magasyne, recorded in 1451 and in wider use from the 1580s.