KNACK

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does knack mean? 

• KNACK (noun)
  The noun KNACK has 1 sense:

1. a special way of doing something

  Familiarity information: KNACK used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• KNACK (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A special way of doing something

Classified under:

Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents

Synonyms:

bent; hang; knack

Context example:

he couldn't get the hang of it

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

endowment; gift; natural endowment; talent (natural abilities or qualities)

 Context examples 

The whole knack lies in pointing your chin to the sky, and then arranging your folds by the gradual descent of your lower jaw.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Elinor, however little concerned in it, joined in their discourse; and Marianne, who had the knack of finding her way in every house to the library, however it might be avoided by the family in general, soon procured herself a book.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

Bessie Lee must, I think, have been a girl of good natural capacity, for she was smart in all she did, and had a remarkable knack of narrative; so, at least, I judge from the impression made on me by her nursery tales.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

You are very fond of bending little minds; but where little minds belong to rich people in authority, I think they have a knack of swelling out, till they are quite as unmanageable as great ones.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

He was a stern, gaunt man, with a harsh voice, and an aggressive manner, but he had the merit of knowing how to assimilate the ideas of other men, and to pass them on in a way which was intelligible and even interesting to the lay public, with a happy knack of being funny about the most unlikely objects, so that the precession of the Equinox or the formation of a vertebrate became a highly humorous process as treated by him.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The King, the Queen, Buckingham, Wolsey, Cromwell, all were given in turn; for with the happiest knack, the happiest power of jumping and guessing, he could always alight at will on the best scene, or the best speeches of each; and whether it were dignity, or pride, or tenderness, or remorse, or whatever were to be expressed, he could do it with equal beauty.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

Beautiful and valuable knick-knacks filled every corner of every apartment, and the house had become a perfect miniature museum which would have delighted a virtuoso.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I put my arms about her to console her, but she wept so that, for all my seventeen years and pride of manhood, it set me weeping also, and with such a hiccoughing noise, since I had not a woman’s knack of quiet tears, that it finally turned her own grief to laughter.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)