almacén

Forms

almacén m (plural almacenes)^[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Andalusian Arabic مخزن (maḵzán, “storehouse”), from Arabic مخزن (maḵzan, “depot, granary, storehouse”), with the Arabic article.^{[2][3][4][1][5]} The Arabic noun is formed from a root meaning “to store”, the root also of alacena.^[2][3] In the Middle Ages the word had a voiced /z/, as Neuvonen, the Aragonese inventories and Nebrija show.^[2]

The same Arabic word is Portuguese armazém, earlier almazém, and Catalan magatzem, whose voiced /dz/ turned the /h/ before it into /g/;^[6][7] Old Spanish had almagacén too.^[2][6][7] Italian magazzino was taken directly from the Arabic variant without the article, and French magasin came from the Italian word; this is the source of magacín, which Wiktionary calls a doublet of this word.^[2][1][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

In the oldest document, of 1225, the word means the royal treasury, the sense from which comes the Moroccan majzén “government”.^[2][3] In the 1250s the Sevillian privileges of Ferdinand III and Alfonso X speak of the oil mills that belonged to the king's almazén.^[9]

Semantic evolution

In Andalusian Arabic the word was used especially for an oil store and an arsenal, and both senses, above all the second, are frequent in medieval Spanish.^[2] Since the good weapons sought by knights were not kept in the king's arsenal, the phrase de almacén, first said of weapons, came to mean “ordinary, of poor quality”; hence gastar almacén “to make a fuss over trifles”, almacén de palabras “idle talk” in the Celestina, and almacén “something harmful” in the 16th–17th centuries.^[2][10] The 1494 record from Santo Domingo, mucho almacén, is still munitions.^[11]

The modern senses are a warehouse, a wholesale shop and, in the Americas, a general store or grocer's.^[4][12] In Spain grandes almacenes is a department store.^[13]

Timeline

• 1225 – first record, for the royal treasury.^[2][3]
• c. 1250 – almazenes in the Bocados de oro.^[14][9]
• 1251 – the king's almazén in a privilege for Seville.^[9]
• 1284 – the Estoria de España has bread left in an almazen at Valencia.^[15]
• 1374 – d'almazen in an Aragonese inventory, of weapons.^[14][2]
• 1494 – first record in the Americas, at Santo Domingo.^[11]
• early 17th century – the verb almacenar.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. A warehouse or building where goods are stored: Las cajas están en el almacén.^[4][1]
2. A shop that sells goods, usually wholesale.^[4]
3. (printing) Each of the magazines holding a set of matrices of one type in a linotype machine.^[4]
4. (Latin America) A grocer's or general store selling food and household goods.^[4][12][1]
5. (in the plural, Spain) grandes almacenes: a department store.^[13]

Word family

• almacenar
• almacenaje
• almacenero
• almacenista

Related words

• almacenamiento
• magacín
• alacena
• Portuguese armazém
• Italian magazzino

Usage notes

Old and dialect forms include almazén, almagacén and Aragonese almarcén; some speakers in the Americas make the word feminine.^[16]

References

1. ^ a b c d e f Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 1, 180
3. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. almacén
4. ^ a b c d e f Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. almacén
5. ^ Corriente, Federico (1999), Diccionario de arabismos y voces afines en iberorromance, Madrid: Gredos, p. 181
6. ^ a b Corriente, Federico; Pereira, Christophe; Vicente, Ángeles (2019), Dictionnaire des emprunts ibéro-romans: emprunts à l'arabe et aux langues du monde islamique (Encyclopédie linguistique d'Al-Andalus 3), Berlin: De Gruyter, p. s.v. almacén
7. ^ a b Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 344
8. ^ Gómez de Silva, Guido (1988), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua española, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica / El Colegio de México, p. 54
9. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. almacén
10. ^ Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 50
11. ^ a b Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, p. s.v. almacén
12. ^ a b Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. almacén
13. ^ a b Battaner Arias, Paz (dir.) (2017), Diccionario general de la lengua española VOX, Barcelona: Larousse Editorial, p. s.v. almacén
14. ^ a b Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. almacén
15. ^ Kasten, Lloyd A.; Nitti, John J.; Gago Jover, Francisco (2002–), Diccionario de la prosa castellana del Rey Alfonso X, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (electronic edition 2024), p. s.v. almacén
16. ^ Real Academia Española (2021–), Tesoro de los diccionarios históricos de la lengua española (TDHLE): Diccionario histórico (1933–1936), its unpublished slips, Diccionario histórico (1960–1996), DHECan, DHECR, DHEVen, https://www.rae.es/tdhle, p. s.v. almacén