Other forms: magazines
A magazine is a publication that comes out weekly or monthly, printed on glossy paper, full of photographs, articles and advertisements. Most now exist online as well, and the word has followed them there without changing.
The other main sense is military and it is not a metaphor: the magazine of a gun is the part that holds the cartridges, and a magazine on a ship or a base is the store where ammunition is kept. Both senses come from the same word and the same idea — a store of things kept ready — and the printed sense was a deliberate borrowing, a magazine of articles. Note the stress, which falls on the last syllable in British English: mag-a-ZINE.
1nounmagazineA publication issued weekly or monthly with articles and photographs.
“She writes for a gardening magazine.”
synonyms: periodical, journal
2noungunThe part of a gun that holds the cartridges.
“He took the magazine out before handing it over.”
3nounbuildingA building or room where ammunition is stored.
“The magazine was built well away from the barracks.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
magazine is a publication.
Arabic makhazin meant storehouses. Italian and French borrowed it for a warehouse — French magasin still means a shop — and English took the military store from that. In 1731 The Gentleman's Magazine used the word for a printed collection, a storehouse of pieces, and the new sense grew over the old one without displacing it.
Middle English
magasyne
English, today
magazine
Built from
From Middle English magasyne. From Middle English magasyne, from Middle French magasin (“warehouse, store”), from Italian magazzino (“storehouse”), ultimately from Arabic مَخَازِن, plural of مَخْزَن (“storeroom, storehouse”), noun of place from خَزَنَ (“to store, to stock, to lay up”). 1580s.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA