MASTERY

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does mastery mean? 

• MASTERY (noun)
  The noun MASTERY has 3 senses:

1. great skillfulness and knowledge of some subject or activity

2. power to dominate or defeat

3. the act of mastering or subordinating someone

  Familiarity information: MASTERY used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• MASTERY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Great skillfulness and knowledge of some subject or activity

Classified under:

Nouns denoting cognitive processes and contents

Synonyms:

command; control; mastery

Context example:

a good command of French

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

skillfulness (the state of being cognitively skillful)

Derivation:

master (be or become completely proficient or skilled in)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Power to dominate or defeat

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Synonyms:

domination; mastery; supremacy

Context example:

mastery of the seas

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)

Sense 3

Meaning:

The act of mastering or subordinating someone

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Synonyms:

mastery; subordination

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

domination (social control by dominating)

Derivation:

master (have dominance or the power to defeat over)

 Context examples 

They possessed greater mastery over matter than the gods he had known, most powerful among which was Grey Beaver.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

Well, he is not a ghost; yet every nerve I have is unstrung: for a moment I am beyond my own mastery.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

From Spitzbergen through the Arctic, and across Canada and the Barrens, he had held his own with all manner of dogs and achieved to mastery over them.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

It is the wind that fans the desire until it leaps up to mastery. That’s temptation.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

But I beg and pray you, gentlemen, that you will go from my house, for I know not what may come of it if his rage should gain the mastery of him.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

It was difficult to refuse any of Sherlock Holmes’ requests, for they were always so exceedingly definite, and put forward with such a quiet air of mastery.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Culture and collars had gone together, to him, and he had been deceived into believing that college educations and mastery were the same things.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Save in the one matter of having an inborn readiness for music, so that the mastery of any instrument comes very easily and naturally to me, I cannot recall any single advantage which I can boast over my fellows.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The Count saw his victory in my bow, and his mastery in the trouble of my face, for he began at once to use them, but in his own smooth, resistless way:—I pray you, my good young friend, that you will not discourse of things other than business in your letters.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

Traddles now informed me, as the result of his inquiries, that the mere mechanical acquisition necessary, except in rare cases, for thorough excellence in it, that is to say, a perfect and entire command of the mystery of short-hand writing and reading, was about equal in difficulty to the mastery of six languages; and that it might perhaps be attained, by dint of perseverance, in the course of a few years.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)