Word Watch: Deft
A new generation of journalists have just discovered it
Two recent comments from the press: “Jordan Dunbar [a former drag performer] deftly explains the social and political context [of Blood on the Dance Floor] without losing the story’s ‘beating heart’”. – The Week 28 Sept 2024.
“This is a weighty volume … The essays are deft and perceptive, pinpointing trends and themes and connections” - The Critic, October 2024.
“Deft” is a word I’ve always rather liked, but until lately has been an infrequently used term that I associated with specific, often poetic contexts. I’ve recently noticed it popping up rather often, as though a new generation of journalists have just discovered it. I’m delighted for them, and welcome it (in its adverbial as well as its adjectival form), but it’s oddly difficult to define precisely, and I sometimes wonder if it’s being quite correctly used.
Online we find its meaning given as “neatly skilful”. But Merriam-Webster elaborates: “ready and skilled in physical movements”. This surely rules out the word in the context of my citations. A verbal essay or explanation doesn’t involve “physical movement”. In these instances, it seems to refer specifically to mental processes.
The Oxford English Dictionary broadly confirms these meanings: its primary definition is “skilful, dexterous, clever or neat in action”. It seems worth noting, though, that originally the word meant “humble” or “modest”, words that give us the unassuming, small scale implied in the modern sense of “deft”. One of the Dictionary’s citations tells us that the verbally dexterous Thomas Carlyle spoke of a “deft tongue”, which confirms an application essentially local and small-scale. The word is also, we learn, cognate with “daft”, which likewise seems to locate the sense in the individual, not in the larger mass.
What’s clear from my first two quotations is that the physical reference that was integral to the original sense of “deft” has almost disappeared, replaced by a meaning related to the deployment of language. It’s a pity in some ways, but “deft” is such a charming word I’m glad to see it in use at all.