Library / English Dictionary

PROWESS

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (noun) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

A superior skill that you can learn by study and practice and observation

Example:

it's quite an art

Synonyms:

art; artistry; prowess

Classified under:

Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents

Hypernyms ("prowess" is a kind of...):

superior skill (more than ordinary ability)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "prowess"):

airmanship; aviation (the art of operating aircraft)

eristic (the art of logical disputation (especially if specious))

falconry (the art of training falcons to hunt and return)

fortification (the art or science of strengthening defenses)

homiletics (the art of preaching)

horology (the art of designing and making clocks)

minstrelsy (the art of a minstrel)

musicianship (artistry in performing music)

enology; oenology (the art of wine making)

puppetry (the art of making puppets and presenting puppet shows)

taxidermy (the art of mounting the skins of animals so that they have lifelike appearance)

telescopy (the art of making and using telescopes)

ventriloquism; ventriloquy (the art of projecting your voice so that it seems to come from another source (as from a ventriloquist's dummy))

Credits

 Context examples: 

He was a killer, a thing that preyed, living on the things that lived, unaided, alone, by virtue of his own strength and prowess, surviving triumphantly in a hostile environment where only the strong survived.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

Somehow, in spite of his prowess, his old school name of Boy had clung very naturally to him, until that instant when I saw him standing in his self-contained and magnificent manhood in the doorway of the ancient house.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

This was the man that looked at White Fang, delighted in his ferocious prowess, and desired to possess him.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

Strange it was to these gallant and sparkling cavaliers of Spain to look upon this handful of men upon the hill, the thin lines of bowmen, the knots of knights and men-at-arms with armor rusted and discolored from long service, and to learn that these were indeed the soldiers whose fame and prowess had been the camp-fire talk of every army in Christendom.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Knowing their own prowess, they never refused the chance of a wayside adventure, and it was seldom indeed that the bargee or the navigator had much to boast of after a young blood had taken off his coat to him.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)