Adjective: dexterous
Comparison Forms
Synthetic
Perifrastic
| Comparative | more dexterous |
| Superlative | most dexterous |
Sample Sentences
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She is pleasingly dexterous with the chopsticks, and keeps one hand lying palm up on her lap. Pinched with just the right pressure between the sticks; funny how plump women have that delicate touch. [1960, John Updike, 'Rabbit, Run', page 57:]
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We went frequently out with this boat a-fishing; and as I was most dexterous to catch fish for him, he never went without me. [1719 May 6 (Gregorian calendar), [Daniel Defoe], The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, […], London: […] W[illiam] Taylor […], →OCLC:]
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1775, speech by Edmund Burke
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[…] the study [of law] renders men acute, inquisitive, dexterous, prompt in attack, ready in defense […]
Adjectives inflected like dexterous
priest-ridden,
unreposed,
evadible,
dissentious,
dissentient,
unforesighted,
egocentrical,
unephemeral,
unennobling,
mensuralist,
flocculent,
unseductive,
whoopsy,
whooshy,
surrogate,
Nicodian,
unrepaired,
prismatoidal,
renorenal,
unseducible, etc. (List truncated at 20 adjectives)
Etymology
1. Etymology tree
2. Proto-Indo-European *déḱs
3. Proto-Indo-European *deḱs-terósder.
4. Proto-Italic *deksteros
5. Latin dexter
6. Proto-Indo-European *h₃ed-
7. Proto-Indo-European *-os
8. Proto-Indo-European *h₃édosder.?
9. Proto-Italic *-ŏ̄dsos?
10. Old Latin -ōssus
11. Latin -ōsus
12. Old French -usbor.
13. Middle English -ous
14. English -ous
15. English dexterous
16. From Latin dexter (“right, ready”) + -ous. Displaced native Old English handcræftiġ.