[ adj ] having or revealing supreme mastery or skill <adj.all> a consummate artistconsummate skill a masterful speaker masterful technique a masterly performance of the sonata a virtuoso performance
Masterful \Mas"ter*ful\, a. 1. Inclined to play the master; domineering; imperious; arbitrary. --Dryden.
2. Having the skill or power of a master; indicating or expressing power or mastery.
His masterful, pale face. --Mrs. Browning.
Bentsen has been masterful at gathering campaign contributions from normally GOP sources, a fact that has Republicans awed and a bit peeved.
With masterful understatement, Rep. Blanchette describes this transaction as "peculiar."
He is a masterful social satirist, to be sure: "The official Commission on Child Care, known to be a pet concern of the prime minister's, had spawned fourteen subcommittees whose task was to make recommendations to the parent body.
And what is rated as Holbein's most masterful portrait of the monarch is in London _ on loan.
Gerald Ford's writers tried to keep him away from "judgment," which he insisted on making "judg-a-ment." Reagan's writers luxuriate in his masterful delivery of their lines but their ulcers stir when he strays from the text.
Young Jon Fredric West sang the masterful god Apollo with high efficiency, and even conveyed some vital feeling.
Madonna's new album isn't really new, but rather a collection of danceable hits, remixed by club deejays masterful at that peculiar art of taking the artists' work, track by track, and reconstructing it.
If either succeeds, even the masterful Mr Aliyev may be able to do little for his native land.
Charles McKeown, who also has the dual role of Rupert and Adolphus, wrote the masterful screenplay with Gilliam.
So why do audiences cheer for her masterful connivings? Because Griffith's Tess McGill is quite the most endearing movie character in years.
Barry Levinson ("Tin Men," "Good Morning, Vietnam") directs in masterful style.
Business at one point seemed to be offering a good candidate: Volvo's masterful chairman, Pehr Gyllenhammar.
The majority report on Iran-Contra is masterful political advocacy.
No publisher wants his book on Nietzsche, an embarrassment he's kept from his cold and masterful wife Sabina.
"A masterful teacher turns out people who do it better than he does.
But now Rep. Sidney Yates, Congress's staunchest champion of the arts and a masterful boll weevil, has begun to buckle, carving up parts of the heretofore sacrosanct $170 million endowment.
Compared with this masterful portrait, I found her performance Saturday vocally baffling, if hardly the disheveled, coarse piece of work described by others attending earlier performances.
He played in his first World Cup in Mexico at 20. His club form has often been inconsistent but in the 1990 World Cup he was often masterful.