late 16th cent.: from French magasin, from Italian magazzino, from Arabic maḵzin, maḵzan 'storehouse', from ḵazana 'store up'. The term originally meant 'store' and was often used from the mid 17th cent. in the title of books providing information useful to particular groups of people, whence sense 1 (mid 18th cent.). Sense 3, a contemporary specialization of the original meaning, gave rise to sense 2 in the mid 18th cent