Word Finder - masterly

definition

Executed in the manner of a master; showing competence and skill; masterful.

example

Her years of experience enabled her to render a masterly performance.

synonyms

• maestrolike
• masterlike
• masterous

definition

(usually derogatory) Like a master; arbitrary; domineering, imperious.

synonyms

• despotic
• overbearing

He showed extraordinary energy, resource and military talent in stemming the advance of the royalists, who now followed up their victories by advancing into the association; he defeated them at Gainsborough on the 28th of July, and managed a masterly retreat before overwhelming numbers to Lincoln, while the victory on the 11th of October at Winceby finally secured the association, and maintained the wedge which prevented the junction of the royalists in the north with the king in the south.

This policy he pursued with masterly skill.

James Ward's masterly criticism of Herbert Spencer (Naturalism and Agnosticism) has been mentioned above.

This masterly winter-campaign first revealed Gdrgei's military genius, and the discipline of that terrible month of marching and counter-marching had hardened his recruits into veterans whom his country regarded with pride and his country's enemies with respect.

But as a translator Plautus is nothing less than masterly.

On his own initiative he conducted exhaustive inquiries into the conditions of the Sicilian peasants and of the Tuscan metayers, and in 1877 published in co-operation with Signor Leopoldo Franchetti a masterly work on Sicily (La Sicilia, Florence, 1877).

A tall funnel-shaped vase of this class, of which a considerable part has been preserved, is divided into zones showing bull-hunting scenes, wrestlers and pugilists in gladiatorial costume, the whole executed in a most masterly manner.

Napoleon was then in the midst of operations against Sir John Moore, whose masterly march on Sahagun (near Valladolid) had thwarted the emperor's plans for a general "drive" on to Lisbon.

A masterly device, initiated by him, was to collect gases over mercury instead of water; this enabled him to obtain gases previously only known in solution, such as ammonia, hydrochloric acid, silicon fluoride and sulphur dioxide.

In the same year Berzelius discovered selenium in a deposit from sulphuric acid chambers, his masterly investigation including a study of the hydride, oxides and other compounds.

With all its defects, Der fliegende Hollander is the most masterly and the least unequal of Wagner's early works.

Apart from the gain in tragic force resulting from Wagner's masterly development of the character of Brangaene, the raw material of the story was already suggestive of that astounding combination of the contrasted themes of love and death, the musical execution of which involves a harmonic range almost as far beyond that of its own day as the ordinary harmonic range of the 19th century is beyond that of the 16th.

A masterly conspectus of the general character of the Hellenistic kingdoms in their political, economic and social character, their artistic and intellectual culture is given by Beloch, Griech.

He was appointed reporter of the commission charged with the preparation of the law, and his masterly report at once marked him out as one of the coming leaders.

By a series of powerful speeches in and out of parliament, and by the publication of his masterly pamphlet, 1 793 and 1853, Cobden sought to calm the passions of his countrymen.

The style is lucid and masterly, and the summary of astronomical history with which it terminates has been reckoned one of the masterpieces of the language.

In 397 Syracuse had to stand a siege from the Carthaginians under Himilco, who took up his quarters at the Olympieum, but his troops in the marshes below suffered from pestilence, and a masterly combined attack by land and sea by Dionysius ended in his utter defeat.

Of his own work few, if any, examples have reached us; and those attributed with more or less probability to his hand are all representations of Buddhist divinities, showing a somewhat formal and conventional design, with a masterly calligraphic touch and perfect harmony of coloring.

The sculptures attributed to Jocho, the founder of the Nara school, although powerful in pose and masterly in execution, lack the truth of observation seen in some of the earlier and later masterpieces.

He is best known by his masterly detection of the literary imposture of Vella, which claimed to be a history of the Saracens in Syria.

The Introductions are masterly expositions.

It was not until the light was failing that Napoleon reached the heights of Rossomme opposite to Wellington's position and, by a masterly reconnaissance in force, compelled the duke to disclose the presence of practically the whole Anglo-Dutch army.

Supernatural Religion (1874-1877; collected 1889) are often masterly conservative interpretations of the external evidence; but they leave this evidence still inconclusive, and the formidable contrary internal evidence remains practically untouched.

In October 1877 the Nez Perces under Chief Joseph after a masterly retreat from Idaho of over loon m., probably unequalled in Indian warfare, were hemmed in by greatly superior forces and captured in the Bear Paw Mountains in Chouteau county.

In this he gives a masterly survey of synagogal rites.

Smith was among the latter; Karl Knies and others justly remark on the masterly sketches of this kind which occur in the Wealth of Nations.

But his Report, published in the following year, is a masterly survey of the situation and included recommendations that profoundly influenced the later history of Canada.

The octagonal sacristy (before 1488), with niches below and a gallery above, with stucco decorations by Bramante himself (the frieze with putti and medallions is ascribed to Caradosso), is a masterly work, and one of his best.

Another result of Lessing's labours in Hamburg was the Antiquarische Briefe (1768), a series of masterly letters in answer to Christian Adolf Klotz (1738-1771), a professor of the university of Halle, who, after flattering Lessing, had attacked him, and sought to establish a kind of intellectual despotism by means of critical journals which he directly or indirectly controlled.

Previous to Professor Friedrich Delitzsch's masterly work on the origin of the most ancient Babylonian system of writing,' no one had correctly understood the facts regarding the beginnings of the cuneiform system, which is now generally recognized as having been originally a pure picture writing which later developed into a conventionalized ideographic and syllabic sign-list.

One of the most masterly writers of French in Belgium was the economist Emile de Laveleye.

Grattan warned the government in a series of masterly speeches of the lawless condition to which Ireland had been driven.

Between invasion and home discontent, the tyrant was all but lost; but the Spartan Pharacidas stood his friend; the Carthaginians again suffered from pestilence in the marshes of Lysimelia; and after a masterly combined attack by land and sea by Dionysius Himilco went away utterly defeated, taking with him his Carthaginian troops and forsaking his allies.

The American Anti-Slavery Society was organized in December of that year (1833), putting forth a masterly declaration of its principles and purposes from the pen of Garrison.

For his masterly conduct of these affairs Lord Moira was created marquess of Hastings in February 1817.

He also produced masterly translations of the popular Slovenic songs current in Carniola (Volkslieder aus Krain, 1850), and of the English poems relating to "Robin Hood" (1864) .

Almost every year from this time forward until near his death he published about Christmas time one or two of these unique stories, so delicate in their humour and pathos, and so masterly in their simplicity.

Even in its present ruined state, it is apparent that in spite of the masterly treatment of particular passages, such as the robe of the pope, Darer still lacked a true sense of harmony and tone-relations, and that the effect of his work must have been restless and garish beside that of a master like the aged Bellini.

The last owed success to Payindah's son, Fatteh Khan (known as the "Afghan Warwick "), a man of masterly ability in war and politics, the eldest of twenty-one brothers, a family of notable intelligence and force of character, and many of these he placed over the provinces.

In this he drew a masterly picture, not only of the life and immorality of the friars but also of the insolent Filipino chiefs or caciques, subservient to the powers above, tyrannical to those below, superstitious, unprogressive and grasping.

As the result of the patient and masterly organization of the "young Turks," combined with the universal discontent with the rule of the sultan and the palace camarilla, the impossible seemed to be achieved, and the heterogeneous elements composing the Ottoman empire to be united in the desire to establish a unified state on the constitutional model of the West.

Everything in short was ripe for the reception of a book that brought together, with masterly ease and vigour, the old and the new Homeric learning, and drew from it the historical proof that Homer was no single poet, writing according to art and rule, but a name which stood for a golden age of the true spontaneous poetry of genius and nature.

In 1870 he published a masterly history of the Romantic school.

The Ulyssea of Gabriel Pereira de Castro describes the foundation of Lisbon by Ulysses, but, notwithstanding its plagiarism of The Lusiads and faults of taste, these ten cantos contain some masterly descriptive passages, and the ottava rima shows a harmony and flexibility to which even Camoens rarely attained; but this praise cannot be extended to the tiresome Ulyssipo of Sousa de Macedo.

Among general critical studies are Costa e Silva's Ensaio biographico-critico and the masterly work of Menendez y Pelayo, Historia de las ideas estaticas Espana.

Simon published many clinical surgical lectures of the greatest importance, and contributed a masterly article on "Inflammation" to Holmes's System of Surgery, which has become a classic of its kind.

In the fourth and fifth decades the question of Livy's authorities presents no great difficulties, and the conclusions arrived at by Nissen in his masterly Untersuchungen have met with general acceptance.

The classical purity of his style, the eloquence of his speeches, the skill with which he depicted the play of emotion, and his masterly portraiture of great men, are all in turn warmly commended, and in our own day we question if any ancient historian is either more readable or more widely read.

Le Boys de Guays began his masterly translation of all Swedenborg's theological works and instituted public New Church worship, which was carried on at his house for thirty years.

A masterly combined movement by land and water enabled Germanicus to concentrate his forces against the main body of the Germans encamped on the Weser, and to crush them in two obstinately contested battles.