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magnate

/ˈmæɡneɪt//ˈmæɡneɪt/·noun
a wealthy and powerful person, especially in business or industry
Fig. 1 — I watch one figure stand perfectly still while every coin on the floor begins to crawl toward it, as though the man were a lodestone and the money so much loose iron.
01Definition

A magnate is a person of great wealth and power, especially the commanding figure at the head of a large industry — an oil magnate, a press magnate, a shipping magnate. From the Latin magnus, 'great', the word implies command over huge revenue and the kind of influence that lets a magnate consolidate whole sectors under a single name. It carries a sense of dominance: not merely rich, but powerful enough to bend a market around themselves.

02In use
  • iThe railway magnate owned every line for a hundred miles and the towns that depended on them.
  • iiA media magnate can shape opinion across an entire country where rival voices are scarce.
  • iiiShe rose from a market stall to become a retail magnate whose brand was prevalent on every high street.
03Collocations
  • a business magnate
  • an oil magnate
  • a media magnate
  • a shipping magnate
  • a property magnate
04Relations

=tycoon, mogul, baron, industrialist, grandee

06TOEFL & IELTS

Useful in economics and history writing, usually with the industry named first ('an oil magnate'). Pronounced /ˈmæɡneɪt/. Note the near-homophone 'magnet' — unrelated words despite the look: magnate is from Latin magnus, 'great', magnet from the Greek lodestone of Magnesia — a magnate is a powerful person, a magnet pulls iron.

07Asked
Do magnate and magnet sound the same?
Nearly, and that is the whole trap. Magnate usually ends like 'late' — /ˈmæɡneɪt/, with /ˈmæɡnət/ recorded as a variant — while magnet always ends weak: /ˈmæɡnət/. The words are unrelated: magnate comes from Latin magnus, 'great'; magnet from the lodestone of Magnesia. The scene above leans into the mix-up on purpose — the magnate stands like a lodestone while the coins do all the moving — but the pun stays a pun.
What exactly is a business magnate?
A person whose wealth and control dominate an industry, not merely a rich one: the word implies a market bent around a name. Its register is grand and slightly old-fashioned, inherited from the nineteenth century's railway and steel magnates — the same figures critics called robber barons when the power looked predatory. Newspapers still prefer it for empire-scale owners rather than salaried executives.
What is the difference between a magnate, a tycoon and a mogul?
Same tier of wealth, different flavours. Magnate is the formal, neutral one. Tycoon arrived from Japanese taikun, 'great lord', a title Westerners brought home in the 1850s — it leans energetic and self-made. Mogul echoes the Mughal emperors and now clings to entertainment: media mogul, movie mogul. You could describe one person with all three and change only the costume.
What was a magnate in history?
Long before boardrooms, magnates were the great nobles — late Latin magnates, 'the great ones', named the landed class powerful enough to counterweigh kings. Hungary's upper house was literally called the House of Magnates, and the Polish magnate families held estates the size of provinces and dominated the Commonwealth's Senate. The business sense is a nineteenth-century transfer of that aristocracy onto industrialists.
Which other English words come from magnate's root?
The magnus family is everywhere: magnitude (greatness of size), magnify (make greater), magnificent (done greatly), magnanimous (great-souled — generous to rivals), plus magnum opus, a career's greatest work. Magnate is simply 'a great one' wearing a suit. None of them touch magnet, whose Greek root is a stone's home town rather than greatness.