Other forms: magics
Magic is impossible tricks and mysterious powers, on stage or in stories. Do magic, a magic trick, like magic.
Stage magic is skill presented as impossibility, and the performers' own term for the craft is misdirection — the trick is where you are not looking. In stories, magic is real power with rules, and the rules are what make a story work. As an adjective it means wonderful: it was magic. Note magical, magician; magic wand; and that magic comes from the Persian priests called magi.
1nounmagicImpossible tricks and mysterious powers.
“The wizard used magic to turn the frog into a prince.”
2adjectivewonderfulWonderful, in informal use.
“The concert was absolutely magic; I'll never forget it.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
magic is mysterious power or illusion.
Greek magikos comes from magos, a member of the Persian priestly caste. The magi of the nativity are the same word, so magic is named after foreign priests whose rites the Greeks did not understand.
Middle English
magik
English, today
magic
Built from
From Middle English magik. From Middle English magik,magyk, from Old French magique, from Latin magicus, magica, from Ancient Greek μαγικός (“magical”), from μάγος (“magus”). Ultimately from ira-old -, probably derived from Proto-Indo-European megʰ- (“to be able to, to help; power, sorcerer”). ġealdor (whence galder) and dwimmer.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA