Magician

How to spell magician

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce magician

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does magician mean?

1. nounA person who entertains an audience with tricks, illusions, and sleight of hand, or in stories one who practises magic.

Magician in a sentence

• The children's party booked a magician to perform card tricks.

• The magician pulled a rabbit from the top hat to loud applause.

Where does magician come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word arrived in English in the late 1300s from Old French magicien, which was built on the Latin magicus meaning 'magical' or 'pertaining to sorcery'. That Latin term traces back to the Greek magikos, the adjective form of magos, the name for a member of an ancient Persian priestly caste, the Magi, who were renowned for their astrology and occult arts. So the original 'magicians' were not stage entertainers but learned Persian priests, and the same magos root gives us the biblical Magi, the wise men of the nativity story. Over the centuries the meaning drifted from genuine sorcery and necromancy toward the modern sense of a performer who entertains with sleight of hand and illusion. The spelling trap is the ending: the word sounds like '-shun' but is written '-cian', the suffix that marks a person skilled in a craft, just as in physician and optician.

How the word is built

• magic (sorcery, from Greek magos)
• -ian (one who practises)