magic-number
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
12 characters
Language
English
word origin
Source
Wiktionary
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "magic-number", 12-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Wiktionary, and usage frequency ranked against an open word-frequency list covering the top 100,000 English words. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "magic-number" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "magic-number" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
magic number is aEnglishnoun. It means: The number of neutrons or protons in nuclei which are required to fill the major quantum shells, and thus produce exceptionally stable nuclei: 2, 8, 20, 28, 50, 82 and 126.
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Browse all word comparisons →| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | magic number |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 12 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for magic number is 12 letters long, classified as anoun. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader.Wiktionary records 7 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
No misspelling variants are generated for magic number in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns.It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is magic number, spelled M-A-G-I-C- -N-U-M-B-E-R, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The number of neutrons or protons in nuclei which are required to fill the major quantum shells, and thus produce exceptionally stable nuclei: 2, 8, 20, 28, 50, 82 and 126.
- 2A metric used to determine a team's required performance to make the playoffs.
- 3A metric used to determine a team's required performance to make the playoffs.
- 4A number which is manually entered into source code, rather than defined somewhere as a named constant; especially one which is arbitrary or lacks explanation.
- 5A sentinel value which cannot occur in normal use, typically used as a placeholder (e.g. a fictitious date such as 2000-02-32).
- 6A hash code, such as those used by some webmail servers to keep track of sessions.
- 7A number or pattern in a binary file that identifies the filetype.
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter M in our English index: