skilledskilled /skɪld/ ●●○ adjective 
Skilled craftsmen, such as carpenters, are in great demand. The company is fortunate to have such highly skilled workers.skilled at/in She’s very skilled at dealing with the public. The school offers a program for students who are skilled in metalwork.► see thesaurus at skilful2[usually before noun] skilled work needs people with special abilities or training to do it OPP unskilled: Bricklaying is very skilled work.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER DICTIONARIES
- Keeping highly skilled sailors in the Navy is a priority.
- More women are entering skilled trades such as carpentry and cooking.
- Our advisors are skilled at dealing with financial problems.
- Shoeing a horse is a skilled job, and no unskilled person should try it.
- There is a demand for carpenters and other skilled craftsmen.
- There is a shortage of skilled workers in the area.
- Alyse was a skilled rider and tried to help me with my technique, but I never excelled.
- As is typical of most women's paid employment, this work is not considered particularly skilled and wages are low.
- I have a friend at Sotheby's, who is sending a skilled art packer to box up these things tomorrow.
- Instead, we imprisoned thousands of skilled people, and thousands more fled in terror.
- Many Silicon Valley companies are growing so fast, they are eager to build a skilled high-tech workforce.
- Nevertheless, as in many other situations the analyst, himself a skilled performer, has some success in practice.
- The hallmark of the industrial revolution has been the slow replacement of the unskilled by the skilled.
- This mechanisation helped the skilled workers to increase production rapidly and to produce the cloth more cheaply.
THESAURUS
British English, skillful American English good at doing something, especially something that needs special ability or training: · a skilful player· the artist's skillful use of color· Success in business depends on skilful management.
able to do something well: · Maria is extremely good at her job.· He was very good at swimming.· I'm not very good at Maths.
having a lot of training and experience, and able to do a job well: · There is a demand for carpenters and other skilled craftsmen.· The country needs highly skilled foreign workers.· Our advisors are skilled at dealing with financial problems.
having a natural ability to do something well: · a talented artist· She's an exceptionally talented student.
having a great natural ability, which few people have: · a gifted writer· a gifted player· a special school for gifted children
Longman Language Activatorgood at something because you have experience or training British /skillful American someone who is skilful does something very well because they have had a lot of training or experience: · the artist's skillful use of color· Success in business depends on skilful management.· Skilful and confident, Donaldson should become one of the game's best players.
someone who is skilled at a particular job has the training and skill to do it well: · There is a demand for carpenters and other skilled craftsmen.skilled job/work (=requiring special skill, especially when you use your hands): · Shoeing a horse is a skilled job, and no unskilled person should try it.highly skilled (=very skilled): · Keeping highly skilled sailors in the Navy is a priority.skilled at doing something: · Our advisors are skilled at dealing with financial problems.
extremely skilful at doing something because you have gained a lot of knowledge or experience of this particular subject or activity over a long period of time: · Students learn to cook French food with the help of expert chefs.· My grandmother was an expert dressmaker.expert at/in: · Politicians are usually expert at turning a crisis to their advantage.expert help/advice/opinion etc (=given by someone who knows a lot about it): · Tennis coaches will be available to provide expert advice.
spoken use this to say that someone is good at doing something and you admire and trust them because of this: · Kids can tell if a teacher doesn't know what he's doing.· You seem to know what you're doing -- I'll leave you to it.
good at doing something that needs care and skill, for example dealing with people or with difficult social situations: adept at/in: · Of all our staff, Peter is the most adept at dealing with difficult customers.· McCrea was equally adept in comedy and drama.
someone who is very good at writing, acting, or other artistic skills, especially as a result of a lot of practice and training, but who does not usually have a special natural ability for it: · His two daughters are both accomplished athletes.highly accomplished: · Johann Sebastian Bach had three sons who all became highly accomplished musicians and composers.
to know a subject, especially a language, well and be good at it: · Candidates should have good typing skills and a good command of English.· She has an excellent command of all the facts.
informal to be able to do something very easily because you have done it a lot of times before: · I've played this piece so often I can practically do it in my sleep.
WORD SETSabsenteeism, nounarticled clerk, black economy, nounbloodletting, nounblue-collar, adjectivebook-keeper, nounboss, nounbusiness agent, career path, nouncareer structure, nounCFO, Chartered Financial Consultant, nounCIO, co-manager, nouncommercial agent, company car, nouncompany doctor, company officer, competence, nouncompliance officer, co-worker, nouncreative director, curriculum vitae, nounCV, noundeputy chairman, deskill, verbdismiss, verbdowngrade, verbdownsize, verbearn, verbearner, nounemploy, verbemployable, adjectiveemployee, nounemployer, nounemployment agency, nounengage, verbenrolled agent, escrow agent, executive chairman, filing clerk, fill-in, nounfull-time, adjectiveheadhunter, nounhealth and safety, nounhuman resources, nounjob application, job centre, nounjobless, adjectivelabour exchange, nounledger clerk, moonlight, verbnatural wastage, nounnepotism, nounnetworking, nounnine to five, adverbnumber-cruncher, nounoccupational, adjectiveoff, adverboff-duty, adjectiveoperative, nounoutwork, nounoverseer, nounoverstaffed, adjectivepenalty clause, nounpension fund, nounpension plan, nounpersonnel, nounpiecework, nounpositive discrimination, nounpost, nounpreferment, nounproject engineer, qualification, nounqualify, verbquit, verbrecommendation, nounrecruit, verbredeploy, verbredundancy, nounredundant, adjectivereferee, nounreference, nounreinstate, verbresearch manager, resign, verbresignation, nounresume, nounretired, adjectiveretiree, nounretirement, nounself-employed, adjectivesharecropper, nounshift, nounskilled, adjectivetechnical analyst, testimonial, nountime and motion study, nountrainee, nountransfer agent, underemployed, adjectiveundermanned, adjectiveunderstaffed, adjectiveunemployable, adjectiveunemployed, adjectiveunemployment, noununemployment benefit, noununskilled, adjectivevacancy, nounvacant, adjectivewhite-collar, adjectiveworkday, nounwork experience, nounworkforce, nounworking papers, nounworkweek, noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM THE ENTRY Skilled craftsmen, such as carpenters, are in great demand. The company is fortunate to have such highly skilled workers.COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES She is a highly educated woman.
Skilled craftsmen, such as carpenters, are in great demand. The company is fortunate to have such highly skilled workers.· Building stone walls is a highly skilled craft.
She is a highly educated woman.· Employers want to keep skilled labour because of the cost of training.
(=needing training and experience/not needing training and experience)· Plumbing and carpentry are highly skilled occupations.· Workers in unskilled occupations are finding fewer job opportunities.
· Organizations need to be able to attract skilled personnel.
(=one who has special skills)· There is a shortage of skilled workers.
COLLOCATIONS FROM THE CORPUSADVERB· Their chief concern is that their status as skilled specialists should be recognised and respected.· She was actually foreshortening, as skilled portrait painters do.
· In a constituency such as mine there are many highly skilled men, such as shipbuilders and welders, out of work.· In 1992, 11 percent of all employment visas went to highly skilled scientists.· Hedge-laying is a highly skilled craft, and even at moderate charges your hedge will seem expensive.· The visas are issued according to a system of five preferences, with the most highly skilled falling into the top preferences.· Toolroom turning is one of the most highly skilled jobs of all.· The most highly skilled soldiers advocated rapid maneuver and quick assault when contact was made.· These surveys are invariably undertaken by specialist research organizations, since the construction and administration of questionnaires is a highly skilled operation.· Keeping highly skilled sailors in the Navy also is a challenge.
· Jobclubs are aimed at the younger and less skilled end of the market.
· So, the first requirement is that older workers should be included in the drive for a more skilled workforce.· Judging by wages the import-competing sector is slightly more skilled than the exporting sector.· All but the far right have acknowledged the need to develop a more skilled workforce, since whites can no longer fill the demand.· Foreign manufacturers have preferred to invest in states where the work force is more skilled and the infrastructure is better.· At this point appeared a major difference from Napoleonic warfare: much more skilled staff work was now required.· The departments which employed men were paid above the minimum wage and men's jobs were invariably classified as more skilled activities.· Rather more skilled crafts, such as fullers, shearmen, cutlers, painters and butchers, were around the £10 mark.
· Molecular variation under nature reveals divisions invisible to the most skilled taxonomist.· Many opportunities will exist for the most skilled, adaptable, and knowledgeable financial managers.· But the most skilled and ingenious of all mud-builders are termites.· At the very top of the workforce, the United States is both the most skilled and by far the highest paid.· The most skilled and literate combined the keenest sense of grievance with the ability to articulate their aspirations.· Some economists attribute much of the rising wage inequality in this country to the shift in favor of the most skilled workers.· A few of the guides employed in the park were once the most skilled poachers.· The modelling possibilities should challenge the most skilled hands.
· Family work with elderly people is a very skilled activity.· The Treasury were very, very skilled chaps in more or less stopping you doing anything.· Thus co-ordinate indexing was not recommended for use in schools without very skilled staff being present to operate and coordinate its use.· In politics there are some very successful makers of deals and some very skilled negotiators.· It's actually a very skilled job.· Riding to hounds, taking fences and obstacles along a route dictated by the fox is a very skilled activity.
NOUN· Its rarity and beauty has made it much prized, easily worked by skilled craftsmen and worn by both men and women.· The programme would be labour-intensive and give work to skilled craftsmen as well as apprenticeships to unskilled school-leavers.· A small number were textile millworkers, others were miners, fishermen, or seamen, skilled craftsmen, or farmworkers.· It has been estimated that the industry may be short of some 50,000 skilled craftsmen in the next two years.
· Industries with critical labor shortages launched youth apprenticeships as a way to recruit skilled employees.· There was a letter to the immigration depart-ment about harassing skilled employees on-site.
· One misses an editor's skilled hand.· Under her skilled hands a snake of clay was being coiled into the shape of a large globular jar.· The modelling possibilities should challenge the most skilled hands.
· Toolroom turning is one of the most highly skilled jobs of all.· Too many skilled workers for too few skilled jobs are driving down salaries.· Loss of skilled jobs at Broughton would be unthinkable, say the unions.· Traditionally, skilled jobs have tended to be defined as those requiring apprenticeships.· Joining each box section is a highly skilled job.· Interviewing is certainly a skilled job when carried out properly, but it is not a mystical union between interviewer and respondent.· It's actually a very skilled job.
· Scientific wages have already started to respond to what is effectively a new cheap source of very highly skilled labor.· Boeing blamed late aircraft deliveries, snarled assembly lines and shortages of parts and skilled labor for the loss.· He needed to attract and retain skilled labor.· These reformers were joined by powerful forces in the business community who wanted the schools to help train a skilled labor pool.
· It says it can not get or keep skilled labour.· In July, 16 % of respondents said lack of skilled labour was likely to limit output.· Chief executive Arno Bohn told me that securing skilled labour for its Stuttgart plant was no problem.· Plants in such areas tend to be less innovative, their technologies are older, and they employ less skilled labour.· Such an economy was highly dependent on a vast mass of skilled labour and a greater horde of the lesser skilled.· Employers also wished to retain skilled labour to recoup their investment in training costs.· The shortage of skilled labour will often occur when there are competitive local labour markets.· Worst of all, it has to be dug out of the ground by expensive skilled labour.
· That was to encourage a skilled man to stay.· In a constituency such as mine there are many highly skilled men, such as shipbuilders and welders, out of work.· Although well above the best wages of a skilled man, it was neither market-determined nor received by all registered professionals.· The skilled man could be replaced by the factory hand.· And the old problem remained that skilled men would neither be given suitable work nor time to seek it for themselves.· The Industrial Revolution was gathering pace, and the new machines were throwing skilled men out of work.
· Money and skilled manpower are the main constraints.· Equally, all the machinery in the world would be useless without the skilled manpower to use it.· Righting the economy demanded major cuts in Defence spending and the release of skilled manpower from the Services to export-orientated industries.
· Organizational structure was driven by the necessity of having skilled negotiators in close proximity.· In politics there are some very successful makers of deals and some very skilled negotiators.· The less skilled negotiator prefers to leave things vague and ambiguous fearing that explicitness will jeopardize any agreement.
· A complex dedicated simulator can cost several million pounds and it needs its own crew of skilled operators.· The skilled operator will aim for efficient performance.
· Yet he is loath to part with skilled people who could prove difficult to replace come the upturn.· Instead, we imprisoned thousands of skilled people, and thousands more fled in terror.· The further research here will continue to study highly skilled people but will give special attention to the problems of acquisition.· We need engineers and skilled people.· Some forecasts suggest that, by the turn of the century, 250,000 skilled people will have been lost to the industry.· No, we are not skilled people as such, but we also have our dignity and self respect.· The best of them have produced a small number of highly educated and skilled people.
· The prospects for tourism were constrained by limited airline capacity and the lack of skilled personnel.· Early editions of the Dundee Evening Telegraph newspaper last night carried an advertisement for semi-skilled and skilled personnel.
· Patients who suffer a cardiac arrest are treated by skilled practitioners.· A trained and skilled practitioner can tailor a session to treat insomnia by reducing muscular tension and promoting relaxation.· It has been shown that endoscopy is safe even in high risk groups if performed by a skilled practitioner.· Most skilled practitioners do not use just one style or one particular stroke, but a combination of a variety of techniques.· Granted, any skilled practitioner could make a set of numbers sew a quilt that could cover an airplane hangar.
· The skilled reader does not guess so much as eliminate alternatives by the most efficient route.· Indeed, in Mason's experiment, the skilled readers showed smaller overall response time differences between words and nonwords.· When faced with familiar letter-strings in novel combinations, skilled readers perform better than less skilled readers.· Although words can be processed by a number of different routes, for skilled readers the lexical route is the most attractive.· Experimental data show that skilled readers readily use their orthographic knowledge when processing words.· Long, easy nonwords gained responses from the skilled readers which were no slower than those to short, difficult nonwords.
· The plant will be effectively sealed off from the world apart from periodic inspection and monitoring visits by skilled staff.· Thus co-ordinate indexing was not recommended for use in schools without very skilled staff being present to operate and coordinate its use.· At this point appeared a major difference from Napoleonic warfare: much more skilled staff work was now required.· He says that they need skilled staff - there aren't enough being trained.· Lack of available products, skilled staff and standards appear to be the major obstacles to adopting open systems strategies.· Wherever possible we recruit skilled staff locally.
· The obvious solution - to move into more capital-intensive highly skilled work - is being energetically pursued.· In all his years in Los Angeles, he worked twenty-three jobs, only two of them involving skilled work.· Local private firms had built up a skilled work force that eventually drew in foreign multinationals on terms acceptable to the government.· Success was due to local steel and a reputation for skilled work.· The usual criterion for skilled work is the serving of an apprenticeship.· Without a skilled work force, we can not compete in world markets.
· Policies of economic redistribution to the less well off met with resistance from skilled workers at a time of low economic growth.· The gap between the knowledge of. the skilled worker and bourgeois technician has virtually disappeared or been greatly reduced.· At present the work focuses on developing comparative lists of qualifications and job descriptions for occupations at the skilled worker level.· Of the approximately 123, 000 employment visas issued in 1994, most did not go to skilled workers.· We would have to import skilled workers from abroad.· His identification with skilled workers, forged at the pump works, was real.· Good telecommunications links can bring them closer to western markets, giving their skilled workers less incentive to emigrate.· As a result, when import-competing industries contract, they do not in fact lay off proportionally more unskilled than skilled workers.
· So, the first requirement is that older workers should be included in the drive for a more skilled workforce.· Its goal was to create a highly skilled workforce for the Susquehanna Valley, where P & G is located.· All but the far right have acknowledged the need to develop a more skilled workforce, since whites can no longer fill the demand.· Together, the four groups produce a highly skilled workforce that no one institution could develop on its own.· At Leyland, Preston and Chorley a skilled workforce has built up a reputation over many years for producing lorries and buses.· A highly skilled workforce trained in designing and manufacturing high-quality, high value-added products at low cost, with shorter lead times.
WORD FAMILYnounskilldeskillingadjectiveskilful/skillfulskilled ≠ unskilledverbdeskilladverbskilfully/skillfully
1someone who is skilled has the training and experience that is needed to do something well OPP unskilled: Skilled craftsmen, such as carpenters, are in great demand. The company is fortunate to have such highly skilled workers.skilled at/in She’s very skilled at dealing with the public. The school offers a program for students who are skilled in metalwork.► see thesaurus at skilful2[usually before noun] skilled work needs people with special abilities or training to do it OPP unskilled: Bricklaying is very skilled work.