Talent

How to spell talent

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce talent

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does talent mean?

1. nounA natural aptitude or skill for doing something well.

Talent in a sentence

• Her talent for negotiation closed the deal in under an hour.

• The company runs a programme to spot talent among junior staff.

Where does talent come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Talent began as the Greek talanton, which literally meant 'a balance' or 'a weight', and from there came to name a large unit of weight and a sum of money reckoned in silver or gold. Latin took it as talentum, and the word travelled into Old English and later Old French keeping that financial meaning. The leap to the modern sense of natural ability comes straight from the Bible: in the parable of the talents (Matthew 25), a master entrusts servants with sums of money, and the servant who buries his talent rather than using it is condemned. Medieval readers reinterpreted those coins as God-given gifts, so by the late Middle Ages 'talent' had shifted from a measure of money to a measure of aptitude. That parable is why we still speak of not wasting our talents, and the steady, single-stressed spelling has stayed close to the Latin talentum throughout.

How the word is built

• talent (from Latin talentum, a unit of weight and money)
• no affix; the modern -ent ending preserves the borrowed Latin stem