Try ask your mom someday if she kept a Journal when she was a teenager. I’m sure she will have some fun stories to tell you about it. In the 80’s and 90’s most of the teenagers used to keep a Journal, and although the habit has been lost, it is still a widely used word and has a very interesting origin related to the Catholic Church. In fact, find out the full story after these definitions.

Dictionary Definition

Journal: Noun. A serious magazine or newspaper that is published regularly about a particular subject. (Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary)

Journal: Noun. A written record of what you have done each day, sometimes including your private thoughts and feelings. (Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary)

Journal: Noun. The part of a shaft or axle in contact with or enclosed by a bearing. (Collins English Dictionary)

The most popular Journals are about scientific subjects. However, there are journals on all subjects. In fact, most of us have read at some point at least one paragraph from one of them, so the word Journal remains as a very common one. According to the Collins English dictionary, Journal is one of the 4000 most commonly used words.

Anyhow, here are three examples to write down on your Journal:

“The impact factor – a measure reflecting the annual average number of citations to articles published in a journal – was designed in the 1960s to help libraries decide which journals to purchase.”

From Chemistry World website Article: Journal impact factors wrongly used to evaluate research. 2019

“Digital technology has changed the landscape of scientific publishing. For centuries scholarly communication by publishing in print journals was central to academic life.”

From thebmj website Article: Should I publish in an open access journal?. 2019

“Columbine High School mass murderer Eric Harris began keeping a journal a year before he and Dylan Klebold slaughtered 13 and seriously and critically injured dozens.”

From heavy website Article: The Journals of Columbine Killers Eric Harris & Dylan Klebold. 2019

A book of prayers

The Journal was almost part of a ritual for the teenagers of yesteryear; they had to write in it every day, when they arrived from high school, and ventilate their problems and secrets. Likewise, scientists also take their daily notes to the Research Journal to record every progress.

All this fits very well with the origin of the word Journal, which is a translation of the Anglo-French jurnal. Jurnal meant “daily”, like its predecessor in Latin diurnalis, since they derive from the words diurnus which means “of the day” and dies which is simply “day”.

This word began to be widely used in the 14th century, when adolescence and science were not topics highly esteemed by humanity, but religion was. Journal was the name given by the clergy of that time to the service book in which they had written down the prayers, texts, psalms, hymns and other directions for the liturgy that had to be carried out every day by the churchmen. In some cases these included a very specific schedule for each hour.

Today these types of religious books are known as “Liturgical books”, while the word Journal remains for other types of books or writings to which we turn every day. It is a bit ironic that despite the constant battle between religion and science, the word Journal has been chosen by both for their daily tasks!