Other forms: journals
A journal is a magazine for a serious subject, the place where researchers publish their studies for other people in the field. The British Medical Journal, a law journal, a pile of them on a supervisor desk.
The other everyday sense is private: a journal is the notebook you write your days into, close to a diary but leaning towards thoughts rather than appointments. Journaling has become the word for that habit. Newspapers put it in their titles, as in The Wall Street Journal, and bookkeepers keep a journal of daily entries before anything reaches the ledger. A journalist works in news and not in academic journals, which is a trap worth remembering. Say it with the stress on the first part, JOUR-nal.
1nounjournalA periodical that publishes research articles in a particular subject.~92%
“Her paper was accepted by a journal she had been reading for years.”
synonyms: periodical
2noundiaryA book in which you write about your days and your thoughts.~2%
“He kept a journal every night of the walking trip.”
synonyms: diary
3nounnewspaperA newspaper, especially in the name of one.~2%
“The town journal has printed the same crossword since 1962.”
4noundailyA daily record of business transactions.~2%
“Every payment is written into the journal before the accounts are closed.”
5verbregularlyTo write regularly in a personal journal.~2%
“She journals for ten minutes before breakfast most days.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 18 sentences found in the wild and placed 18 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
journal is a publication.
Journal came through Anglo-Norman jurnal, meaning daily, and Old French jornel, a day, from Latin diurnalis, from diurnus, of the day. Journey shares that root and began as a day of travel. So a journal is a day-book, whether the day holds an experiment or a bad mood, and diurnal is its stiff twin from the same Latin word.
Proto-Indo-European
*dyew-
Latin
diurnālis
Old French
jornel — day
Anglo-Norman
jurnal — daily
Middle English
journal
English, today
journal
Built from
From Middle English journal, from Anglo-Norman jurnal (“daily”), from Old French jornel (“day”) (whence modern French journal), from Latin diurnālis, from diurnus (“of the day”). a doublet of diurnal and the journal#Etymology 2 from French.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA