Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. An optical device formerly used to project an enlarged image of a picture.

Wiktionary

  1. n. An old name for a slide projector
  2. n. An early form of slide projector that could achieve simple animation by moving and merging images.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. adj. See Lantern.
  2. n. An early form of slide projector.
  3. n. an optical instrument consisting of a case inclosing a light, and having suitable lenses in a lateral tube, for throwing upon a screen, in a darkened room or the like, greatly magnified pictures from slides placed in the focus of the outer lens.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. an early form of slide projector

Examples

  • “They walked back across the island, the magic lantern brightening the vicinity steadily.”

    Centaur Aisle

  • “It was as if a puff of wind had blown them; or as if they had been figures thrown on a screen by a magic lantern and suddenly switched off at the performer's whim.”

    The Ivory Trail

  • “He had a magic lantern that illuminated the area as the moon sank into the sea.”

    Centaur Aisle

  • “The police had brought lamps into the seance room from the sitting room, showing all too clearly how the medium had achieved her work; a hatch in the ceiling to the room above, through which things could be lowered; a magic lantern behind the drapes, which had cast its image of a woman and boy onto the thick brazier smoke.”

    The Wizard Of London

  • “That is not to say that I recommend every man to have a magic lantern in his cellar, or the promiscuous purchase of all sorts of useless things as though the world were a kind of providential rummage sale.”

    The Making of an American

  • “On the night Sir Frederic was killed, you were giving a magic lantern show on the floor above -”

    The Black Camel

  • “How can you use a magic lantern here in Mundania?”

    Centaur Aisle

  • “The great stern wheel was flickering like a magic lantern in the starshine; far over on the east shore were the town lights, and from the main saloon on the boiler deck beneath me came the sound of muffled music and laughter; I paced astern and looked down at the uncovered main deck-and that's what I can see and hear now, clear across the years, as though it were last night.”

    Flashman And The Redskins

  • “There is too much amongst us of the French way of palming off false accounts of things on children, "to do them good," and showing nature to them in a magic lantern "purified for the use of childhood," and telling stories of sweet little girls and brave little boys, -- O, all so good, or so bad! and above all, so _little_, and everything about them so little!”

    Woman in the Ninteenth Century and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition and Duties, of Woman.

  • “So far the scene was not unlike the river in which he and Harry had so nearly lost their lives, but as he gazed the details grew clearer, as if it had been a magic lantern view, growing by degrees stronger and every outline of the tropical view was suddenly thrown into strong relief.”

    The Boy Aviators in Africa

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‘magic lantern’ has been looked up 422 times, added to 5 lists, and is not a valid Scrabble word.