Clips and magazines.

Robb posted a pic of a 30 round clip.

That got me to thinking about what the differences are.  Historically I think we can blame the Korean war vets for making clip mean magazine.  They'd been loading their Garands with clips and the M1 and M2 carbines came along so the thing that loads them must be a clip too?  Right?  "Thirty round banana clip" comes from the Korean War.  It parses well, so it entered popular vernacular.

The rule of thumb: Clips feed the magazine, the magazine feeds the gun.  The terms 'clip' 'stripper clip' and 'charger' are interchangeable.

On the left; a ten round clip of 5.56x45mm.  On the right; a thirty round magazine of the same ammunition.

Some history!

The first clips loaded the non-removable magazines of bolt-action rifles.  The charger guide is built right into the receiver, like on this M-1903A3.

I discovered that you can't load the magazine on an M-1903A3 with the magazine cut-off engaged while taking these photos.

At this point you can either pluck out the clip or just shove the bolt forward; the bolt will knock it out of the way.

Even after the introduction of the detachable magazine, many military rifles still retained the charger guide.  The British SMLE (shown here) has a detachable magazine; but only one magazine was issued per rifle.  Reloading was intended to be done from clips (it takes two five round clips to get a full load).  The much later M14 was issued with five magazines per gun, was intended to be loaded with fresh magazines and still retains a charger guide; just in case.

These can be generically called "Mauser" style clips.  They are discarded before the round is chambered.

Mannlicher clips are retained in the gun until the last round is chambered; then they fall out of a slot in the bottom.  Sorry, no pics of this one.  Donations of pics will be accepted and added.

The en-bloc clip of the M1 Garand is a variation on the Mannlicher idea.  The clip forms a part of the magazine and is retained in the gun until the last round is fired, then it is ejected with the final casing.

Notice the clip of the en-bloc forms the feed lips of the magazine?  That's an important distinction of this form of charger.

Mannlicher and en-bloc systems cannot be "topped off" with loose rounds; which may explain why the Mauser system was more popular.  The increasing rate of fire of newer guns virtually dictated that detachable magazines would replace fixed and that multiple magazines would be issued to every soldier.

Modern guns use a sheet metal adapter called a "charger guide" that attaches to the magazine that you insert the clip into to load the magazine.  M16 system illustrated below.