adroit

Someone who is adroit is clever and skillful. An adroit leader will be able to persuade people to go with his ideas. An adroit sculptor can turn a lump of clay into an object of great beauty.

  • Pronunciation: /ə'drɔɪt/
  • English description: quick or skillful or adept in action or thought
  • Synonyms: dexterous
  • Chinese Translation: 机敏的(ji1 min3 de)
  • Spanish Translation: diestro(a)
  • ORIGIN: If you've ever studied French you know that droit means "right," both as in "right of free speech" and as in "left and right," and à droit means both "turn right" and "properly." Once English people borrowed à droit, they changed the meaning slightly, from doing something "properly" to "doing something well." You may have heard the expression "surprisingly adroit," as in, "For a guy whose wife does all the cooking, he is surprisingly adroit in the kitchen."

EXAMPLE SENTENCE:

  • Powerful arms and long fingers make the gibbons adroit at swinging through trees; they rarely descend to the ground.
  • They’re all winningly adroit, and never make brazen bids for our affection.

*New word description, story and part of "EXAMPLE SENTENCE" are cited in Vocabulary