KNACK • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Knack

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/næk/ Listen

noun

Knack n.

1.

A petty contrivance; a toy; a plaything; a knickknack. "A knack, a toy, a trick, a baby's cap."

2.

A readiness in performance; aptness at doing a specific task; skill; aptitude; facility; dexterity; often used with for; as, a knack for playing the guitar. "The fellow... has not the knack with his shears." "The dean was famous in his time, And had a kind of knack at rhyme."

3.

Something performed, or to be done, requiring aptness and dexterity; a trick; a device. "The knacks of japers." "For how should equal colors do the knack!"

verb

Knack v. i.

1.

To crack; to make a sharp, abrupt noise to chink. (Obs. or Prov. Eng.)

2.

To speak affectedly. (Prov. Eng.)

See images of 'Knack'

Etymology of 'Knack'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Knack" Quotes from Famous Books

... for those beliefs which other people cherish; he rejoiced in an open rebellion against convention, and manifested this hostility in an exaggerated carelessness of dress and manner. It was perhaps his habit of thought as much as anything else that had made him a dramatic critic; but it was a knack for keen analysis and a natural, caustic wit that had raised him to eminence in his field. Outwardly he was a sloven and a misanthrope; inwardly he was simple and rather boyish, but years of experience in ...

— The Auction Block • Rex Beach

... not so! Nothing is further from the truth. He writes well not chiefly because he is interested in writing, or because he possesses any especial knack, but because he is more profoundly, vividly interested in the activities of life and he tells about them—over his shoulder. For writing, like farming, is ever a tool, ...

— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson

... of the piazza. Those marble countenances were placid with an eternal youth, beneath the same stars that had embellished irrevocable nights, that recalled some excursions into an enchanted world, some romantic gestures the knack for which ...

— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... old habit, formed in his undergraduate days, of a light, whimsical use of historical and literary allusions. She entered zestfully into the spirit of this kind of fooling; and, to his surprise, she had developed an astonishing knack of imitation and parody. Sometimes Kirkwood without preluding, would utter a line for Phil to cap; they even composed sonnets in this antiphonal fashion and pronounced them superior to the average magazine product. Phil ...

— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson

... not a matter of strength, but of knack. The power of the onrushing bull actually supplied all the strength which was necessary. Dan Collins twisted. The animal's wrinkled neck turned. It could not help turning, for the pain at its nostrils was unbearable. ...

— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman

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