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masterful

adjectiveC1Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #11,330 of 15,258neutral

Masterful means showing complete command of a skill. A masterful performance, masterful control, handled it masterfully.

Careful writers once insisted it meant domineering and that masterly was the word for skill, but that battle is long lost and masterful now means skilled in ordinary use. It is high praise and should be saved for it.

Definitions of masterful

  1. 1adjectivemasterfulShowing complete command of a skill.C1

    “The chess champion gave a masterful display, winning in just twenty moves.”

masterful is a quality.

Where it comes from

Master plus -ful, in Middle English, where the first sense was imperious.

  1. Middle English

    maysterful

  2. English, today

    masterful

From Middle English maysterful, maistrefull, equivalent to master + -ful.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

masterful in the wild

  • The song demands the voice of a masterful soprano.

    I Love You, China

  • Clark rarely worked with a guitarist, although he recorded some wonderful material with Grant Green, Tal Farlow, and Jimmy Raney, three masterful players.

    Sonny Clark Quintets

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.

Related words

  • master
  • mastery