Antibacterial activities of magnolol (MGL) and honokiol (HKL) in combination with four representative antibiotics-amoxicillin (AMPC), oxytetracyclin (OTC), gentamicin (GM) and chloramphenicol (CAP)-were evaluated against four bacterial strains. When tested by disk-plate method, five out of eight combinations such as HKL-AMPC, HKL-CAP, MGL- AMPC, MGL-OTC, and MGL-CAP showed additive to synergistic interaction against gram- negative bacterium Salmonella typhimureum. Of these, MGL-AMPC combination turned out to be antagonistic against Sarcina lutea and Bacillus thurungiensis. Against these two grain-positive bacteria, only HKL-GM combination showed additivity to synergism. All the other combinations showed no interactions. Despite these results, however, no synergism was observed in checkerboard titration assay.