jack-of-all-trades
noun
a person who is adept at many different kinds of work.
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jack-of-all-trades
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jack of all trades
jack of all tradesnouna person who undertakes many different kinds of work
jack-of-all-trades
American
[jak-uhv-awl-treydz, jak-]
/ ˌdʒæk əvˈɔlˈtreɪdz, ˈdʒæk- /
noun
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jacks-of-all-trades
plural
jack of all trades
British
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of jack-of-all-trades
First recorded in 1610–20
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.
See Examples For:
Paul was a jack-of-all-trades and master of many.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 23, 2026
He could start by cutting the animated sequence in which Mary, her young charges and Bert, a local jack-of-all-trades, jump into one of Bert’s sidewalk chalk paintings.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 14, 2025
To make matters even more difficult, Hulls, a painter, adventurer and itinerant jack-of-all-trades, was not really a writer.
From New York Times ● Mar. 1, 2024
“I was actually calling myself a jack-of-all-trades for a long time,” he continues.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 15, 2024
Luke told me I might be a child of Hermes, a kind of jack-of-all-trades, master of none.
From "The Lightning Thief" by Rick Riordan
Greek yogurt, at its core, is a jack of all trades.
From Salon ● Apr. 28, 2026
The human placenta is a jack of all trades.
From Science Magazine ● Mar. 29, 2024
New Zealand's Daryl Mitchell is a jack of all trades and master of one.
From BBC ● Nov. 8, 2022
Related iPadOS 16 preview: jack of all trades, master of some This news, which confirms a report that Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman released earlier this month, comes alongside the first beta release of iPadOS 16.1.
From The Verge ● Aug. 23, 2022
Vincent is a jack of all trades: he supervises shipments, keeps the account books, runs errands, and does whatever other odd jobs need doing.
From "Vincent and Theo: The Van Gogh Brothers" by Deborah Heiligman
One suggests generalists are jacks-of-all-trades but masters of none, meaning they can tolerate a wider range of conditions or food sources but aren't as dominant as a specialist in any specific niche.
From Science Daily ● Apr. 25, 2024
In other words, some yeasts are jacks-of-all-trades and masters of each.
From Science Daily ● Apr. 25, 2024
Before the professions of typesetters and pressmen split, most printers were jacks-of-all-trades, completing apprenticeships that required they learn every task in a printing office.
From Economist ● May 23, 2018
My real beef with the Mikes is not that they are “vanilla”, however, but that they are neither experts nor jacks-of-all-trades.
From Golf Digest ● May 17, 2017
And as the law, like any other profession requires jacks-of-all-trades, the firm acquired a certain peculiar professional standing of its own, and enjoyed the good will of the bar as a whole.
From Tutt and Mr. Tutt by Train, Arthur Cheney
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.
