dextrous
Americanadjective
adjective
Other Word Forms
- dextrously adverb
- dextrousness noun
- nondextrous adjective
- undextrous adjective
- undextrously adverb
- undextrousness noun
Explanation
If you're dextrous, you're graceful and skilled. A dextrous magician can wave her hands around and appear to pull a rabbit out of thin air. When you're dextrous, you have a physical skill — you could be a dextrous football player or a dextrous bass guitarist. You can also describe someone as dextrous who's a quick or clever thinker: "Her jokes are hilarious because she's really verbally dextrous." You can also spell this word as dexterous, and both versions have a Latin root, dexter, "skillful."
Vocabulary lists containing dextrous
A Man Called Ove
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Paradise Lost
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Researchers have provided new insights into how ancestral elephants developed their dextrous trunks.
From Science Daily • Nov. 28, 2023
Next came Bing, Microsoft's search engine updated with a similarly dextrous chatbot, which can answer queries where no obvious result existed online -- like what car seat to buy for a particular model vehicle.
From Reuters • May 10, 2023
With little more than a wardrobe full of costumes and a homemade green screen, he transformed his dextrous wit and encyclopedic knowledge of musical theater into a profoundly successful career.
From Salon • Apr. 30, 2022
"It was just incredibly dextrous and skilled," says Putrino.
From BBC • Jan. 28, 2021
These are filled by women who soon become very dextrous, which is always the case when the pay is in proportion to the amount of work done.
From Asparagus, its culture for home use and for market: a practical treatise on the planting, cultivation, harvesting, marketing, and preserving of asparagus, with notes on its history by Hexamer, F. M.
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
