Hold a lens over a leaf. The leaf does not change at all, but in the circle of glass it fills your whole view. Magnify can be thought of as that move: something is made to take up more room than it did. Sometimes the extra room is in your eye or ear, through glass or speakers. Sometimes it is in the telling, when a report or a worry makes a small thing . Sometimes the thing really does grow, when one more cause piles onto a bad situation. And in older English, the room given is respect — to magnify someone is to speak of them as large.
From the word’s history
The source entry traces magnify through Middle English magnifien and Middle French magnifier to Latin magnificare, from magnificus — the family of magnus, 'great'. The word has therefore carried 'make great' from the start, which is why one verb can cover a lens, an overstatement, a worsening problem and an act of praise.
來源資料把 magnify 追到中古英文 magnifien、中古法文 magnifier，再到拉丁文 magnificare，源頭是 magnificus，屬於 magnus（大）這一家。也就是說，「把它弄大」從一開始就寫在這個字裡。這正好解釋了為什麼同一個動詞可以同時管鏡片、誇大、惡化和頌讚。
Wiktionary etymology supplied in this packet (source_ref kaikki:3f6f69a190036ae4:1055178366:22694)
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