skillful
AmericanRelated Words
Skillful, skilled, expert refer to readiness and adroitness in an occupation, craft, or art. Skillful suggests especially adroitness and dexterity: a skillful watchmaker. Skilled implies having had long experience and thus having acquired a high degree of proficiency: not an amateur but a skilled worker. Expert means having the highest degree of proficiency; it may mean much the same as skillful or skilled, or both: expert workmanship. See also dexterous.
Other Word Forms
- quasi-skillful adjective
- quasi-skillfully adverb
- skillfully adverb
- skillfulness noun
Etymology
Origin of skillful
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.
“He emphasized materials in a very skillful way. His lighting creates spatial depth. You get a different idea of what the architecture consists of.”
From Los Angeles Times
With a few clucks and some skillful handling of the reins, he urged the horse to pull their carriage sideways, blocking the way.
From Literature
But McKenzie, the son of Southland dairy farmers, has been resilient, selfless and, as ever, highly skillful.
From BBC
“Literature nowadays is a trade,” Milvain insists: Putting aside men of genius, who may succeed by mere cosmic force, your successful man of letters is your skillful tradesman.
The irony is that these tactics were once the preserve of less skillful teams that had few other ways of getting anywhere near the goal.
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.
