means A large building used to store goods, materials, or merchandise, typically before they're distributed or sold.

from A plain compound of "ware" and "house." The "ware" here is the same Old English "waru," meaning goods or merchandise — the very word that still lives on in "hardware," "software," and "wares" hawked at market. So a warehouse is literally a goods-house, a name as honest and unadorned as the buildings themselves, in use in English since at least the late medieval period.