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adept
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  • She was also surprisingly adept at speaking without moving her lips.   (source)
    adept = skillful
  • Mae was nodding, because this was the clear meaning for everyone on campus, but she felt it might as well be said, on camera, for anyone less adept at art interpretation.†   (source)
  • Rose bought her a subscription to Glamour, and got adept at copying some of the simpler clothing styles that were nevertheless unavailable in Zebulon County.†   (source)
  • Wights are adept at passing unnoticed.†   (source)
  • I have people here at the lab very adept at extracting user information from the Web.†   (source)
  • The Salvation Army was starting in on "Bye Bye Blackbird" at which they were far more adept.†   (source)
  • As the anthropologist Francesca Bray puts it, rice agriculture is "skill oriented": if you're willing to weed a bit more diligently, and become more adept at fertilizing, and spend a bit more time monitoring water levels, and do a better job keeping the claypan absolutely level, and make use of every square inch of your rice paddy, you'll harvest a bigger crop.†   (source)
  • Besides, it was finished in drywall, not concrete, which Marley had already proved himself quite adept at pulverizing.†   (source)
  • Not like you geisha, who are so adept at lying.†   (source)
  • As I said in the lecture, I was always pretty adept at charging through the brick walls in my academic and professional life.†   (source)
  • Mensch would have liked to see smoother and more technically adept bowing action, but the mechanical stuff was fixable over time.†   (source)
  • Glassmakers became adept at turning out ever larger sheets of plate glass.†   (source)
  • He was a man of God—if he hadn't been a football coach, he said, he'd have liked to have been a preacher—but he was also, very obviously, adept at getting his way on earth without any help from the Almighty.†   (source)
  • Uncle Enzo has serious doubts about this fellow He is a blazer person, adept at running the smalltime bureaucracy of a Nova Sicila franchulate, but lacking in the kind of flexibility that, for example, Y.T. has.†   (source)
  • At the sight of a Middle Eastern man whose car was broken down on the side of the road, one officer remarked that the man was probably more adept at riding camels than fixing cars.†   (source)
  • But, Iike Brett Camber, he was already adept at reading the currents of the parental river upon which he floated.†   (source)
  • Eragon excused himself from the contest as he had never been particularly adept at riddles; the twist of thought necessary to solve them always seemed to escape him.†   (source)
  • It was a fatiguing effort, but on the date set for the ceremony the child was as adept in the ways of the world as any of her sisters.†   (source)
  • We became adept, my mother and sisters and I, at avoiding subtle instruments of death.†   (source)
  • adept at getting his name into print and his mug on the telly.†   (source)
  • She said something to the adept, who nodded and ran back the way he'd come.†   (source)
  • The organism was too frightening to handle, even for those who were comfortable and adept in space suits.†   (source)
  • The little boy whimpered, and Hema rocked him with an adeptness she didn't know she possessed.†   (source)
  • Then one day I realized that I'd never amount to anything without an education and, being naturally adept at spelling, I decided that—†   (source)
  • Tony Horwitz, in frequent calls between our writers' garrets, provided his always adept commiseration, as did the always level-headed Joe White, regularly checking in from Detroit.†   (source)
  • She was adept in creating any number of hair styles, but each one left her with a pinched and harassed look.†   (source)
  • He liked his over medium, with the yolk intact, and she'd grown adept at the process.†   (source)
  • 'Don't let it worry you, Scheisskopf,' said General Peckem, congratulating himself on how adeptly he had fit Colonel Scheisskopf into his standard method of operation.†   (source)
  • Ameh Bozorg had a ready supply of colorful chadors on hand for the visiting women, who were surprisingly adept at changing from black street chador to the brightly colored social model without revealing a speck of forbidden facial skin.†   (source)
  • What is clear is that this place was the home of a hitherto unknown seafaring culture that was very adept in the technical arts.†   (source)
  • I am the great scholar, the magician, the adept, who is doing the experiment.†   (source)
  • The fifty-one-year-old LBJ, as he is known, was perhaps the most successful and powerful Senate majority leader in U.S. history, adept at building partnerships and fortifying his party faithful to pass important legislation.†   (source)
  • In practice, however, he was proving remarkably adept at party politics.†   (source)
  • As always, I seem to be especially adept at alienating the few people I actually want to talk to.†   (source)
  • It is, to him, an interest, a new and somewhat fascinating hobby that he has discovered himself adept at.†   (source)
  • And like her late husband, she was initially dismissed as a joke by her opponents, before proving to be politically adept.†   (source)
  • Which means you can be very, very adept at slang, but you also have to be adept at getting through a job interview.†   (source)
  • She was still beautiful, still funny, still adept with chopsticks.†   (source)
  • That old rogue Ulmer of the Kingswood proved as adept at dancing as he was at archery, no doubt regaling his partners with his tales of the Kingswood Brotherhood, when he rode with Simon Toyne and Big Belly Ben and helped Wenda the White Fawn burn her mark in the buttocks of her highborn captives.†   (source)
  • But as my mortification wore off (and I became more adept at walking with boots) I also got to know her, and she was to become my greatest friend at Clarkebury.†   (source)
  • He was very adept at evasions, she thought and turned away to wander the room.†   (source)
  • He was adept at listening.†   (source)
  • "I don't know for sure," he said, "but I can't imagine that God, who is so adept at linking parents with children, would so cruelly separate them.†   (source)
  • "Keep still!" cried Lillian, more adept than the others at reading danger signs in Rearden's face.†   (source)
  • I have told you that Mama and Aunt made cloth for our family, and by now Beautiful Moon and I were adept at weaving ourselves.†   (source)
  • He was so adept, he found himself wondering why everyone else in his class was so slow.†   (source)
  • Recognizing the benefits he could reap from one as adept with weapons as Drizzt, Wulfgar listened attentively.†   (source)
  • After numerous such missions, Blom and Ramlock and their associates are adept at identifying deception even before the polygraph signals trouble.†   (source)
  • Normally it's not an issue because no one really looks at me, and if they do, I'm pretty adept at looking away fast.†   (source)
  • Julian was adept at coaxing the lizards to crawl into his palm and sleep there as he stroked their heads with his thumb.†   (source)
  • The government had gotten quite adept at that over the years.†   (source)
  • According to Yao Ming's brief notes, the man acted as the manager but was actually the owner, and a number of the waiters were as adept with guns as they were with trays.†   (source)
  • During my two years with the team, I had become quite adept at second base and had also developed a swift underhand pitch that would tempt a batter into a swing but would drop into a curve at the last moment and slide just below the flaying bat for a strike.†   (source)
  • Oh, yes ....I was a ....quarterback ....but I was much more ....adept ....at boxing, really.†   (source)
  • Jesus was a supreme adept, by God, on a terribly important mission.†   (source)
  • She was better with the customers than he was, in fact, always willing to take time for a little small talk, and adept at smoothing over any problems or complaints.†   (source)
  • Cadets at parade were masterful ventriloquists and adept at not getting caught unaware by the quiet approach of a tac officer from the rear.†   (source)
  • If there is one thing at which scientists are adept, it is learning from experience; I was not to be fooled twice.†   (source)
  • Filling stations, service stations, were particularly adept at spotting suspicious persons and reporting them to the police or highway patrol.†   (source)
  • My first impulse was to flee, to throw over the case, dispose of this identity and lose myself in the manner in which I had become adept.†   (source)
  • But she was an adept enough reader to marvel at Faulkner's intricacy of narrative and his turbulent power.†   (source)
  • L. W. De Laurence, Lama, Yoghee, Adept and Magician by Alchymy and Fire.†   (source)
  • For as a people, we Russians have proven unusually adept at destroying that which we have created.   (source)
    adept = skilled
  • Gradually, as he became more adept at controlling the fighter's speed, direction of movement, orientation, and weapons, the game was made more complex.   (source)
    adept = skillful
  • Language can be very adept at hiding the truth.†   (source)
  • Other members of staff were not as adept at hiding their surprise.†   (source)
  • "The Gurney Halleck I knew was a man adept with both blade and baliset," Jessica said.†   (source)
  • I can only hope that you prove more adept at it than at Potions.†   (source)
  • I've always been fairly adept at asking for things.†   (source)
  • He was affectionate in ways she rarely encountered in men, and he was adept at business.†   (source)
  • At ten, Ben was already remarkably adept at predicting her behavior.†   (source)
  • enjoying whatever it was they'd ordered, all of them adept with their chopsticks.†   (source)
  • And he may be adept at strange and terrible magics, abominations of the spellcaster's art.†   (source)
  • Possible theory: More adept, more confident, less inclined to play with victim.†   (source)
  • Over the years, we devised many ways of obtaining them, but back then we were not so adept.†   (source)
  • But he had become adept at noting anyone paying him unusual attention.†   (source)
  • Lanier did not play by the rules but he was quite adept at legitimizing his cheating.†   (source)
  • As a rule, verbeeg are quite adept at rock throwing, and this one was better than most.†   (source)
  • It seemed he was also very adept at making her uneasy.†   (source)
  • With even half an hour of practice, he says, people can become adept at picking up micro-expressions.†   (source)
  • They spent most of the day inside the tent, huddled for warmth around the useful bright blue flames that Hermione was adept at producing, and which could be scooped up and carried in a jar.†   (source)
  • And if Miss Avocet is indeed being held by wights, who are notoriously adept at leapfrogging, then it's extremely likely that the place she and the other ymbrynes are being taken is somewhere in the past.†   (source)
  • Langdon flashed on Dürer's Melencolia I—the image of the dejected Adept, surrounded by the tools of his failed efforts to unveil the mystical secrets of alchemy.†   (source)
  • Warmed up by the persistence of his mentor, in a few months Jose Arcadio Segundo came to be as adept in theological tricks used to confuse the devil as he was skilled in the tricks of the cockpit.†   (source)
  • VOICE: that combined training originated by the Bene Gesserit which permits an adept to control others merely by selected tone shadings of the voice.†   (source)
  • The design was so elegant, so adept at exploiting the strength of thin strands of steel, that the wheel appeared incapable of withstanding the stresses placed upon it.†   (source)
  • Candidates would need a degree of stenographic and typewriting skill, but what he most looked for and was so very adept at sensing was that alluring amalgam of isolation, weakness, and need.†   (source)
  • At the apex of their sway over the affairs of the Universe, their swordsmanship was said to match that of the Ginaz tenth level and their cunning abilities at in-fighting were reputed to approach those of a Bene Gesserit adept.†   (source)
  • Chicago's boosters saw her visit as the first real opportunity to demonstrate the city's new refinement and to prove to the world, or at least to New York, that Chicago was as adept at receiving royalty as it was at turning pig bristles into paintbrushes.†   (source)
  • Nor was she particularly adept at styling and cutting hair, at least according to the directions her customers gave her.†   (source)
  • Not just her Aunt Jemima act, but the fact that she was both adept at it and willing to do it—for him.†   (source)
  • We did not always succeed, but we were able to help those who still fought Galbatorix, and as time progressed, we grew more adept and more confident with our tampering.†   (source)
  • I'd been wonderfully adept at setting the bar rather low over the years, but I couldn't help but hope that it would make what I had planned even more special.†   (source)
  • Hall had become so adept at running climbers of all abilities up and down Everest that he got a little cocky, perhaps.†   (source)
  • Requirements include at least fourteen years' experience as a certified child prodigy, ability to anagram adeptly (and alliterate agilely), fluency in eleven languages.†   (source)
  • Not only was he adept at preparing the fifteen stock mixtures, ointments, and compounds which Missing provided to outpatients, he also had uncanny clinical sense.†   (source)
  • Max had been surprisingly adept at strategy for such a little boy, and Jace had always liked setting him puzzles.†   (source)
  • Even if there were a trustworthy band of spellcasters adept enough to watch over all the other magicians in Alagaesia—ready to intervene at the slightest hint of malfeasance—we would still be reliant upon the very ones whose powers we sought to restrain.†   (source)
  • Nana tried to talk me into organizing the files this summer, but I was extremely adept at putting her off.†   (source)
  • He took pictures at dusk and dawn because he liked the light at those hours; he became adept at moving silently, obtaining close-ups that seemed impossible.†   (source)
  • He liked building things and was adept with power tools after countless weekends working with his father at the mattress factory.†   (source)
  • Mortenson called for the satellite phone he'd bought specially for this trip, and Sarfraz, the most technically adept among them, rode off on his horse to retrieve it from his home, where he'd been learning to use it.†   (source)
  • This Angela seems to be most adept at turning up whenever and wherever events of significance are about to take place.†   (source)
  • Our campaign was under the capable leadership of Popo Molefe, Terror Lekota, and Ketso Gordhan, all veteran UDF activists adept at mass mobilization.†   (source)
  • Brom was most adept at disguising himself, and it had been many years since he and Morzan had last stood face to face.†   (source)
  • I've been called adept occasionally.†   (source)
  • I learned tostick-fight—essential knowledge to any rural African boy—and became adept at its various techniques, parrying blows, feinting in one direction and striking in another, breaking away from an opponent with quick footwork.†   (source)
  • He is most adept at the practice.†   (source)
  • Then Orik marched with his stoutest warriors and most adept spellcaster to the site of the ambush, which they studied and recorded with means both magical and mundane.†   (source)
  • During previous hunts they had killed many, and the pilot had become adept at chasing the beasts so closely that his skis would almost strike them.†   (source)
  • But I had by now become adept at dodging blows and I nimbly ducked my head.†   (source)
  • Most of our male relations were adept at that game.†   (source)
  • But the younger lad grew adept and indeed more adept at petty thieving than at begging.†   (source)
  • She had become adept at putting unpleasant thoughts out of her mind these days.†   (source)
  • Practised divers become adept at dealing with these handicaps, and can hoist those forty pound feet up and down the ship's ladder fairly nimbly—but an amateur half kills himself with the mere toil of movement Lancelot, like the diver, had to learn to be nimble against the force of gravity.†   (source)
  • My wife was adept in achieving such small advantages, first impressing the impressionable with her chic and my celebrity and, superiority once firmly established, changing quickly to a pose of almost flirtatious affability.†   (source)
  • He was adept at ciphering.†   (source)
  • The child became adept at stitching.†   (source)
  • That was done purposely, because, even if the time had come for such a valuation—and it is far more important at the moment to know how much money women had and how many rooms than to theorize about their capacities—even if the time had come I do not believe that gifts, whether of mind or character, can be weighed like sugar and butter, not even in Cambridge, where they are so adept at putting people into classes and fixing caps on their heads and letters after their names.†   (source)
  • I finally grew so adept at it that I could hear her voice, if it was one of her vituperative and not sullen evenings, as though it were coming from a great distance and were not, as a matter of fact, even addressed to me.†   (source)
  • A Bodhisattva is a personage on the point of Buddhahood: according to the Hinayana view, an adept who will become a Buddha in a subsequent reincarnation; according to the Mahayana view (as the following paragraphs will show), a type of world savior, representing particularly the universal principle of compassion.†   (source)
  • I once more interest myself in what passes around me-your very adept handling of the General Forbes, for instance.†   (source)
  • His work—his hands, his technique—became more adept, and his days more steady, less fretful.†   (source)
  • Not only from the unbeliever are mysteries hid, but the adept himself cannot retain them.†   (source)
  • Especially adept did he become in stalking small living things.†   (source)
  • He was too old, too firmly moulded, to become adept at expressing himself in new ways.†   (source)
  • Tom was a distinguished adept at these thefts—by proxy.†   (source)
  • It's fine!" answered Sidorov, who was considered an adept at French.†   (source)
  • Lily's failure to profit by the chances already afforded her might, moreover, have justified the abandonment of farther effort on her behalf; but Mrs. Fisher's inexhaustible good-nature made her an adept at creating artificial demands in response to an actual supply.†   (source)
  • For in the first place there was nothing to see but scrubby little gnarled cedars and drab-looking rocks; and in the second this Indian pony she rode had discovered she was not an adept horsewoman and had proceeded to take advantage of the fact.†   (source)
  • Mr. Beebe, who was an adept at relieving situations, invited Miss Bartlett to accompany them to this mild festivity.†   (source)
  • Moving to Chicago in his early twenties, he worked in an advertising agency where he proved adept at turning out copy.†   (source)
  • Hans Castorp looked down at his own still awkward hands and sensed stored within them the possibility that one day he would hold and use his knife and fork as adeptly as his grandfather.†   (source)
  • Bo was an adept at mounting, but she made such awkward and slow work of it in this instance that Helen could not believe her eyes.†   (source)
  • The olfactory membranes covered an extensive surface; his ears stuck out and were movable, so that they not only played a role in facial expression but also were more adept at catching sound than at present.†   (source)
  • On such occasions, Herr Settembrini's humor had at one time helped to smooth matters over; but although he sat in the same chair now, Hans Castorp was less adept at this and unable to lay claim to the necessary authority.†   (source)
  • He became an adept at fighting.†   (source)
  • Wenzel the Czech, who toward the end had provided a little change of pace by shutting off the gramophone and plunking his mandolin quite adeptly, now laid his instrument down.†   (source)
  • An adept in the business, standing at the box and seeing by the mere action of the elbow where each put his ball, scowled with annoyance.†   (source)
  • Nature, he knows, has a language of her own, which she uses with strict veracity, and he considers himself an adept in the language.†   (source)
  • The aide-de-camp, an adept in his art, grasping his partner firmly round her waist, with confident deliberation started smoothly, gliding first round the edge of the circle, then at the corner of the room he caught Helene's left hand and turned her, the only sound audible, apart from the ever-quickening music, being the rhythmic click of the spurs on his rapid, agile feet, while at every third beat his partner's velvet dress spread out and seemed to flash as she whirled round.†   (source)
  • A burst of laughter from the auditors did not in the least disconcert the speaker, who continued,—"Yes, gentlemen; Edward, the infant phenomenon, who is quite an adept in the art of killing."†   (source)
  • The charming young man was a great adept at such teasing; the ladies had christened him "the naughty man," and he seemed to be delighted at the name.†   (source)
  • I shall no doubt be gratified by learning in good time what a well-finished and full-blown adept in a certain trade my lady is.†   (source)
  • A novice in the game generally seeks to embarrass his opponents by giving them the most minutely lettered names; but the adept selects such words as stretch, in large characters, from one end of the chart to the other.†   (source)
  • It could hardly be credited, however, that I had, even here, so utterly fallen from the gentlemanly estate, as to seek acquaintance with the vilest arts of the gambler by profession, and, having become an adept in his despicable science, to practise it habitually as a means of increasing my already enormous income at the expense of the weak-minded among my fellow-collegians.†   (source)
  • As for the detective, he was simply an adept, and worthy of being matched against his present opponent.†   (source)
  • Adept as she was, in all the arts of cunning and dissimulation, the girl Nancy could not wholly conceal the effect which the knowledge of the step she had taken, wrought upon her mind.†   (source)
  • Deerslayer was a sufficient adept in the usages of the natives to understand the reason of the change.†   (source)
  • Boxing, rat-hunting, the fives court, and four-in-hand driving were then the fashion of our British aristocracy; and he was an adept in all these noble sciences.†   (source)
  • "Your friend performs delightfully," he continued after a pause, on seeing Bingley join the group; "and I doubt not that you are an adept in the science yourself, Mr. Darcy."†   (source)
  • Then, with the lightning action in which he was such an adept, he noiselessly slipped his hand under the bottom of the tent-cloth, which was far from being pinned tightly down, lifted it a little way, keeping his eye to the hole, snatched the note from her fingers, dropped the canvas, and ran away in the gloom towards the bank and ditch, smiling at the scream of astonishment which burst from her.†   (source)
  • Although he had often heard admirable imitations of this bird, and was no mean adept himself in raising its notes, he felt satisfied that Hurry, to whose efforts in that way he had attended, could never so completely and closely follow nature.†   (source)
  • All this was lost on Deerslayer, who was no great adept in the mysteries of Cupid, but whose mind was far more occupied with the concerns that forced themselves on his attention, than with any of the truant fancies of love.†   (source)
  • And at his shoulder Odysseus, adept at war, moved up to drag out by the heels each man he killed, thinking by this to save the beautiful horses from shying at the bodies when they passed— being unused to dead men yet.†   (source)
  • First for charioteers he set the prizes: a girl adept at gentle handicraft to be taken by the winner, and a tripod holding twenty-six quarts, with handle-rings.†   (source)
  • Trained and adept, they circled there with ease the way a potter sitting at his wheel will give it a practice twirl between his palms to see it run; or else, again, in lines as though in ranks, they moved on one another: magical dancing!†   (source)
  • And thus for a time I was occupied by exploded systems, mingling, like an unadept, a thousand contradictory theories and floundering desperately in a very slough of multifarious knowledge, guided by an ardent imagination and childish reasoning, till an accident again changed the current of my ideas.†   (source)
    standard prefix: The prefix "un-" in unadept means not and reverses the meaning of adept. This is the same pattern you see in words like unhappy, unknown, and unlucky.
  • I'm hardly adept at subtle conversation.†   (source)
  • But you, brave and adept from this day on—
    Odysseus' cunning has hardly given out in you—
    there's every hope that you will reach your goal.†   (source)
  • They quickly swore the oath that I required
    and once they had vowed they'd never harm the herds,
    they moored our sturdy ship in the deep narrow harbor,
    close to a fresh spring, and all hands disembarked
    and adeptly set about the evening meal.†   (source)
  • Lounsbury was also an adept and favorite expositor.†   (source)
  • George Ade, undoubtedly one of the most adept anatomists of the American character and painters of the American scene that the national literature has yet developed, is neglected because his work is grounded firmly upon the national speech—not that he reports it literally, like Lardner and the hacks trailing after Lardner, but that he gets at and exhibits its very essence.†   (source)
  • The result, in the case of the neo-Celts, is a dialect that stands incomparably above the tight English of the grammarians—a dialect so naïf, so pliant, so expressive, and, adeptly managed, so beautiful that even purists have begun to succumb to it, and it promises to leave lasting marks upon English style.†   (source)
  • He therefore had recourse to his usual receipt of patience, for, though he was not a great adept in Latin, he remembered, and well understood, the advice contained in these words —Leve fit quod bene fertur onus in English: A burden becomes lightest when it is well borne— which he had always in his mouth; and of which, to say the truth, he had often occasion to experience the truth.†   (source)
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