Other forms: aptitudes
An aptitude is a natural talent for learning something. An aptitude for languages, an aptitude test, show real aptitude.
It is about how easily you learn rather than what you already know, which is what an aptitude test claims to measure and why it is used for jobs where nobody has done the work before. It takes for. Attitude is its doublet, from the same Latin word.
1nounaptitudeA natural talent for learning something.
“She showed an early aptitude for music and could play the violin by the age of five.”
aptitude is a talent.
APTitude → not ATTITUDE: what you can actually do
She had the attitude of somebody who did not care at all, and the plain ability of somebody who could do it right the first time.
hooks ontoattitude
Medieval Latin aptitudo comes from aptus, fitted or suited. Attitude is a doublet by way of Italian.
Latin
aptus — apt, fit
Medieval Latin
aptitudo
Middle French
aptitude
English, today
aptitude
From Middle French aptitude, from Medieval Latin aptitudo, from Latin aptus (“apt, fit”). by surface analysis, apt + -itude. a doublet of attitude.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA