- diary
- diary: [16] Like its semantic cousin journal, a diary is literally a ‘daily’ record. It comes from Latin diarium, a derivative of diēs ‘day’. Originally in classical Latin the word meant ‘daily allowance of food or pay’, and only subsequently came to be applied to a ‘record of daily events’. From the 17th to the 19th century English also had an adjective diary, from Latin diarius, meaning ‘lasting for one day’.
- diary (n.)
- 1580s, from Latin diarium "daily allowance," later "a journal," neuter of diarius "daily," from dies "day" (see diurnal); also see -ary. Earliest sense was a daily record of events; sense of the book in which such are written is said to be first attested in Ben Jonson's "Volpone" (1605).