warehouse/godown

I see the word "godown" used in Indian and Nepali English-language newspapers when refering to warehouses, but almost never when reading papers outside of the Indian sub-continent.
Perhaps somebody on this forum knows the derivation of this word.

As almost any dictionary will tell you, the word was borrowed from the Malay word godong, which in turn probably derives from a similar word in Telugu, a language spoken in southeastern India.

I doubt you'd see the word used in a newspaper outside of India or Southeast Asia. The word is very occasionally used in fiction, travel narratives, sociological reports, and the like, when writing about that region of the world, presumably because it adds a bit of "local color."

In some parts of SE Asia it is sometimes spelt as "gudang".

It's certainly used in Singapore.

Ennglish novels about China is what comes first to my mind.. and probably related to Hong Kong, Macau and Shanghai...

I have seen it very often in Singapore and Malaysia...

In Indonesia the words is written as 'gudang' as in the clove cigarette brand Gudang Gamam http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gudang_Garam

It still gets use in Hong Kong: some of the warehouses and factories down by the ports are labelled as Godowns.

In the state of Johore,Malaysia the container port area is named "Pasir Gudang".

Yes, it's used in Hong Kong as well.

Eric Cumine's "Hong Kong Ways and Byways" says,

"Godown: A warehouse or store in the early colonial days used to be on the ground floor of the commercial hongs where the export and import cargo could be examined and stored or distributed.

"The space would be referred to by an order to 'go down' but there is a Malay word 'gadong' which is used for a store-house. There are also words with almost similar sounds and meanings in India. The word appears as early as the early 17th century."