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:
Anunoby had never made an All-Star team, but he was basketball’s ultimate jack-of-all-trades.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 11, 2026
Maurice Sr. was both jack-of-all-trades and working-class Renaissance man, for a time alternating roles as nightclub bouncer and drum-playing orchestra leader, Nurse said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 2, 2024
Mann played his way into the rotation in his second season by being an indispensable, high-energy jack-of-all-trades.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 5, 2023
Rebecca Miller salvaged the modest furnishings from the studio, including a daybed, a pot-belly wood stove and an old metal office chair that her father, a jack-of-all-trades, insisted on fixing rather than replacing.
From Seattle Times ● Jul. 2, 2023
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
He described the role as "a bit of a jack of all trades" covering aspects of A&E work, intensive care and anaesthetic departments, all by the side of the road.
From BBC ● Jul. 31, 2025
The human placenta is a jack of all trades.
From Science Magazine ● Mar. 29, 2024
I use my platform to say that people in musical theater are not jack of all trades, master of none.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 21, 2023
He was a jack of all trades who was a master of them, too.
From "Carry On, Mr. Bowditch" by Jean Lee Latham
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
Every one of my fellows does something or other so exquisitely, that it were sin to make him do anything else—it is your jacks-of-all-trades who are masters of none.—But hark to Chaubert's signal.
From Peveril of the Peak by Sir Walter Scott
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.
