Talent

Talent means the skill that someone has quite naturally to do something that is hard. Someone who has talent is able to do something without trying hard. It is an ability that someone is born with. It is a high degree of ability or of aptitudes. People may have talent for music, dancing, acting, sport or other skills. Someone who has talent is talented:

Mozart had a talent for music. He had a great talent. He was very talented.

We say that someone is “born with a talent”.

If someone has talent they still have to work very hard if they want to be very good at something. Some people become quite good at something even if they do not have much talent, but if they are willing to work very hard at the skill. Some people “waste their talent” (they have talent but do not work hard at it, they do not “use their talent”).

Other words for talent are aptitude or gift. A talented person is a gifted person who has worked really hard.

The Broadway musical Fame is about a group of talented young people in a dancing school.

The word talent used to mean a weight and a piece of money in Assyria, Greece and Rome. This is the sense in which it is used in the Bible in the parable of the five talents