Talk:magic

A Verb????
Is 'magic' ever really used as a verb? "He magicked the ball" "I love to magic around the house" "Do you magic for a living?" Not even in slang, not even in bad fantasy novels.


 * Do a google search for "magic into existence". 500+ just for that phrase. You can think of others and you'll find they have usage. "magicked into" will give you another 2000, and so on. Robert Ullmann 17:31, 5 November 2006 (UTC)


 * oh, your examples are transitive, use as an intransitive verb is probably more common. Robert Ullmann 17:33, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Etymology
Outside Indo-European languages, compare:


 * Sino-Tibetan:
 * Chinese: 巫 (wū, OC *ma (some reconstruct as *mjag), "witch, shaman")
 * Tibetan: མོ (mo, "to divine; fate") (> མོ་མ (mo ma, "witch"), མོ་པ (mo pa, "divinator")); མིག་འཁྲུལ / མིག་འཕྲུལ (mig ' khrul / mig ' phrul, "magic trick")
 * Burmese: မျက် (myak, "magic", as in မျက်လှည့်ဆရာ ("magician"))
 * Altaic:
 * Korean: 무당 (mutang, "shaman, witch") (native word)
 * Japanese: みこ (miko, "sibyl, shrine maiden") (native word)
 * Austro-Asiatic:
 * Vietnamese: mo ("sorcerer, witch doctor") (native word) (> thầy mo ("sorcerer, magician", thầy = master))
 * Khmer: ហ្ម (mɑɑ, "witch doctor, sorcerer"), មេមត់ (mee mʊət, "witch, medium")
 * Tai-Kadai:
 * Thai: มด (mót, "sorcerer") (> มดหมอ (mót mɔ̌ɔ, "doctor, physician"), แม่มด (mɛ̂ɛ mót, "witch, sorceress"))

Hbrug 00:18, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Help
Could somebody translate this word to ukrainian for me?--Oksana Yulia (talk) 17:35, 17 September 2012 (UTC) Oksana Yulia


 * магія, чарівництво, чаклунство. —Stephen (Talk) 17:54, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Isaac Bonewits's definitions
Since Isaac Bonewits has a Bachelor of Arts in Magic and Thaumaturgy; University of California, Berkeley he qualifies as an expert in the field. "Here’s the three ways I do it in the current (1989) edition of my first book, Real Magic:

1) A general term for arts, sciences, philosophies and technologies concerned with (a) understanding and using various altered states of consciousness within which it is possible to have access to and control over one’s psychic talents, and ::(b) the uses and abuses of those psychic talents to change interior and/or exterior realities.

2) A science and an art comprising a system of concepts and methods for the build-up of human emotions, altering the electrochemical balance of the metabolism, using associational techniques and devices to concentrate and focus this emotional energy, thus modulating the energies broadcast by the human body, usually to affect other energy patterns whether animate or inanimate, but occasionally to affect the personal energy pattern.

(3) A collection of rule-of-thumb techniques designed to get one’s psychic talents to do more or less what one wants, more often than not, one hopes." - Bonewits, Isaac (2005 Authentic Thaumaturgy pg 18 --174.99.238.22 16:45, 9 February 2020 (UTC)
 * We're a descriptive dictionary. We document what people mean when they use a term- not what some self-proclaimed expert says it should mean. Chuck Entz (talk) 21:56, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

“Magic” in its descriptive role
Fowler reads Magic(al): The two words compete with one another in all the main senses, ‘relating to magic’, ‘produced by or as if by magic’, and ‘wonderful’, although in certain fixed expressions such as magic carpet only magic is used. When used in its descriptive role, magic still behaves more like a noun than an adjective, which is to say that it cannot be preceded by very, extremely, etc., and does not have a comparative.

What "descriptive role" is the author referring to, and as opposed to what other(s)? --Backinstadiums (talk) 19:04, 23 July 2021 (UTC)