Other forms: mages
A mage is a magician, in stories. A powerful mage, the mage's tower, a battle mage.
It belongs to fantasy fiction and games, where it names a spellcaster and often a specific character class. It is a shortening of magus, the Latin for a Persian priest — the Magi of the nativity are the same word — and it came to mean a magician because those priests were credited with occult knowledge.
1nounmageA magician, in stories.
“In the story, an old mage casts a spell that turns the prince into a frog.”
mage is a magician.
Latin magus comes from Greek magos, a Persian priest, from Old Persian. Magic and the Magi come from the same word.
Proto-Indo-European
*megʰ-
peo
𐎶𐎦𐎢𐏁
Ancient Greek
Μάγος
Latin
magus
Middle English
mages
English, today
mage
From Middle English mages (plurale tantum), from Latin magus, from Ancient Greek Μάγος, from the hapax peo 𐎶𐎦𐎢𐏁. a doublet of magus.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA