adept

UK/əˈdɛpt/US/əˈdɛpt/

adjectiveC1Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #9,723 of 15,258leans written

Adept means very skilled at something. Practised enough that it looks easy.

It takes at or in: adept at handling difficult customers, adept in three languages. The word suits acquired skill rather than raw talent, which is why it fits people who have clearly done a thing many times. It works as a noun too, and an adept is an expert, though that use is rare and slightly mystical. Do not confuse it with adopt or adapt, which look similar and mean nothing like it.

Definitions of adept

1adjectiveadeptHighly skilled at something through practice.C1
“He is adept at getting other people to volunteer.”
synonyms: skilled, proficient

Where it comes from

An adept is somebody who has arrived. Latin adeptus means one who has achieved, from adipiscī, to attain, so skill is described here as a destination reached.

French
adepte
English, today
adept

Built from

adipisci · Latin — to attain

Borrowed from French adepte. French adepte, from Latin adeptus (“who has achieved”), the past participle of adipisci (“to attain”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Sharper Adjectives, A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 38 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

adept in the wild

According to magical tradition, adepts stand out from others due to their enhanced abilities.
Adept
Though he was adept at accompanying rock and R&B artists, he also played free-form jazz.
Howard Wales
An adept is a member of advanced degree in certain occult, esoteric or philosophical organizations.
Adept (disambiguation)
In contrast to many of his contemporaries, he placed special emphasis on the depiction of human figures, at which he was very adept.
Heidelberg Painter

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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