In time, however, trick began to undergo softening, and by the 1600s, it was also used to refer to more light-hearted pranks and jokes. This makes some sense if you know that trick is from the Latin tricari, which means 'to behave evasively' or 'shuffle.' The writers aren't referring to a type of harmless prestidigitation: these tricks are mean-spirited stratagems and lies. When trick first appeared in writing in the 15th century, it referred to something used to deceive or defraud people: we have evidence of 'unknightly tricks' and 'false tricks' going back to the early 1400s. But the original trick was not so light-hearted.

When we think of magic tricks, we generally think of discrete feats that require dexterity and ingenuity in order to make people believe something that isn't true: the 'pick a card' trick, or the 'disappearing coin' trick, or sawing a person in half. The Old Persian magûs also gave us a word familiar to gamers: mage. The root from which both magus and magic stem refers to a sorcerer. The name Magi was also given to a hereditary class of Zoroastrian priests of the ancient Medes or Persians-though this use of the word Magi in English comes several hundred years after the name given to the traditional 'Three Wise Men.' ( Magi is plural: magus is the singular.) The word comes from an ancient Iranian word, borrowed into Greek, that gave us the names of the Magi.įor those not up on their Christmas lore, the Magi are three men, sometimes reckoned as kings, priests, or astrologers, who traveled from their homes east of Israel upon reading a portent in the sky (a star) in order to pay homage to the infant Jesus. William Shakespeare, A Winter's Tale, 1616Īnd by the 1800s, magic was also applied to the tricks and sleights of hand that conjurers and magicians did.īut the word has its origins in something that's not necessarily magical in any modern sense. By the 1700s, magic had also come to refer to anything that seemed like a supernatural power This is the sort of magic that shows up in the Harry Potter series, and the kind that the people accused of witchcraft in 17th-century Massachusetts were accused of performing. The word magic goes back to the 1300s, and it originally referred to rituals, incantations, or actions thought to have supernatural power over the natural world.

Here's where all the magic (sense 2b) begins: with magic.

Magic word abracadabra