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MASTERY
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I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
The act of mastering or subordinating someone
Synonyms:
mastery; subordination
Classified under:
Nouns denoting acts or actions
Hypernyms ("mastery" is a kind of...):
domination (social control by dominating)
Derivation:
master (have dominance or the power to defeat over)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Great skillfulness and knowledge of some subject or activity
Example:
a good command of French
Synonyms:
Classified under:
Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents
Hypernyms ("mastery" is a kind of...):
skillfulness (the state of being cognitively skillful)
Derivation:
master (be or become completely proficient or skilled in)
Sense 3
Meaning:
Power to dominate or defeat
Example:
mastery of the seas
Synonyms:
domination; mastery; supremacy
Classified under:
Nouns denoting stable states of affairs
Hypernyms ("mastery" is a kind of...):
ascendance; ascendancy; ascendence; ascendency; control; dominance (the state that exists when one person or group has power over another)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "mastery"):
superiority; transcendence; transcendency (the state of excelling or surpassing or going beyond usual limits)
Derivation:
master (have dominance or the power to defeat over)
Context examples:
His mastery was rigid as steel.
(White Fang, by Jack London)
There were fierce fighters among them, but three battles with the fiercest brought Buck to mastery, so that when he bristled and showed his teeth they got out of his way.
(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)
On this first day he took hold of it with conscious delight in the mastery of his tools.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
The vehemence of emotion, stirred by grief and love within me, was claiming mastery, and struggling for full sway, and asserting a right to predominate, to overcome, to live, rise, and reign at last: yes,—and to speak.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
“And the sun is gone,” she said, her eyes still fixed upon our island, where we had proved our mastery over matter and attained to the truest comradeship that may fall to man and woman.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
He knew the hands of the gods, their proved mastery, their cunning to hurt.
(White Fang, by Jack London)
Also he saw one dog, that would neither conciliate nor obey, finally killed in the struggle for mastery.
(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)
In spite of every advantage of university training, and in the face of her bachelorship of arts, his power of intellect overshadowed hers, and his year or so of self-study and equipment gave him a mastery of the affairs of the world and art and life that she could never hope to possess.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
But greater than that, to the wolf-cub, was their mastery over things not alive; their capacity to communicate motion to unmoving things; their capacity to change the very face of the world.
(White Fang, by Jack London)
Then he was a masterful dog, and what made him dangerous was the fact that the club of the man in the red sweater had knocked all blind pluck and rashness out of his desire for mastery.
(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)
