magnet

plural magnets

1. A piece of material that attracts some metals by magnetism.
2. figurativelyin compoundsinformaloftenAn alluring or attractive person or thing.

   He always had a girl on his arm – he's a bit of a babe magnet.

   4 more examples

   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

   Again, dude? Man, you just a MAGNET for trouble!

   2004, Intelligent Systems, translated by Nintendo of America, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, Nintendo, GameCube, level/area: Glitzville

   […] 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

   Synonyms: lodestone

3. InternetabbreviationellipsisEllipsis of magnet link.

   Magnets are thus used to create a package of cryptologic information and bundling^([sic]) it together.

   2019, David Adams, Ann-Kathrin Maier, Big Seven Study (2016): 7 open source Crypto-Messengers to be compared, page 142