magnet

Etymology

From Middle English magnete, via Old French magnete, Latin magnēs, magnētem (“lodestone”), from Ancient Greek μαγνῆτις [λίθος] (magnêtis [líthos], “Magnesian [stone]”), either after the Lydian city Magnesia ad Sipylum (modern-day Manisa, Turkey), or after the Greek region of Μαγνησία (Magnēsía) (whence came the colonist who founded the city in Lydia). Related to manganese, magnesia and magnesium.

noun

1. A piece of material that attracts some metals by magnetism.
2. (informal, figurative, often in combination) A person or thing that attracts what is denoted by the preceding noun.
   He always had a girl on his arm – he's a bit of a babe magnet.
   Iron and coal were the magnets that drew railways to this land of lovely valleys and silent mountains—for such it was a century-and-a-half ago, before man blackened the valleys with the smoke of his forges, scarred the green hills with his shafts and waste-heaps, and drove the salmon from the quiet Rhondda and the murmuring Taff. 1939 September, D. S. Barrie, “The Railways of South Wales”, in Railway Magazine, page 157
   […] I wanted to show Nick the largest of the water holes, Rigueik, that act as magnets to life in the dry season. 2007 March, J. Michael Fay, “Ivory Wars: Last Stand in Zakouma”, in National Geographic, section 47
   Regular baths will help keep your dog clean and fresh-smelling. The frequency will depend entirely on your own preferences as well as how much of a mud-magnet your dog is! 2022, Steve Mann, Easy Peasy Cocker Spaniel
3. (Internet) Short for magnet link.
   Magnets are thus used to create a package of cryptologic information and bundling it together. 2019, David Adams, Ann-Kathrin Maier, Big Seven Study (2016): 7 open source Crypto-Messengers to be compared, page 142