magnetic needle

1. 1.

   a slender magnet suspended in a magnetic compass on a mounting with little friction; used to indicate the direction of the earth's magnetic pole

   Broadermagnet

   Part ofmagnetic compass

Questions about magnetic needle

What does magnetic needle mean?

magnetic needle means "a slender magnet suspended in a magnetic compass on a mounting with little friction; used to indicate the direction of the earth's magnetic pole".

Is magnetic needle a common word?

magnetic needle is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.