Talent
/ˈtælənt/noun
A natural aptitude for something; also, collectively, the people who have it.
The Greek roots
Literally: “a balance, a weight”
The story of the word
A tálanton was first a pair of scales, then the weight they held, then a large sum of silver, roughly what a skilled worker might earn in a decade and a half. The modern meaning comes out of one story: in Matthew 25 a master hands three servants talents to invest and condemns the one who buries his. Preachers read the money as God-given ability so relentlessly that by the fifteenth century English had changed the word's sense, and the coin fell away entirely.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Old English → English
- First recorded
- before 1100
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
In a sentence
She has a talent for making strangers talk about themselves.
The company keeps losing talent to firms that pay less and listen more.