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Past master   /pæst mˈæstər/   Listen
Past master

noun
1.
Someone who was formerly a master.
2.
Someone who has long and thorough experience in a given activity.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Past master" Quotes from Famous Books



... respectability would have soured any ordinary woman's temper. Hers it refined; it made her into something akin to an angel. He was her cross; she bore him meekly and not, I like to think, without extracting a kind of sly, dry fun out of the horrible creature. A past master in the art of gentle domestic nagging, he made everybody miserable as long as he lived, and I would give something for an official assurance that he is now miserable himself. He was a worm; a good man in the worse sense ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... and nibbling daintily at the macaroni. The dinner was good, as far as it went. Of so much she was certain, for Susan was an expert in plain cookery, and, in her own cooking class, Cicely had shown herself past master in the art of entrees. It only remained to be seen whether or not she could succeed in getting the supplies to and from the table without losing off her cap or dropping too many of the forks. Just outside the door, Allyn was toiling ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray

... many a life in the Crimea, and has numerous works due to his engineering skill, not only in this country, but in distant lands. There is little about his house suggestive of the craft of which he is a past master. He pleads a most artistic hobby: that of pictures; and after spending a day with him and Lady Rawlinson—they have been happily married for sixty-three years—I made a hurried survey of the artistic treasures on the walls once more, and tried to single ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... very friendly with Mademoiselle de Cernay; he overwhelmed her with kind attentions. Cayrol watched him to see if he spoke to her of love, but Panine was a past master in these drawing-room skirmishes, and the banker got nothing for his pains. That Cayrol was tenacious has been proved. He became intimate with the Prince. He tendered him such little services as create intimacy, and when he was sure of not being repulsed with ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet

... her host's elbow watching the game through a cloud of suffocating cigarette smoke. Even old Griggs, who detested cards, had sacrificed himself in order to make up the second table. As for Logotheti, he was too tactful to refuse a game in which every one knew him to be a past master, in order to sit out and talk to ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford

... matter what their station, Lawrence cherished a provincial contempt for such people as are not of Manhattan. While he was woefully timid in the presence of firearms, and the flash of steel reduced him to a panic, he was a past master at the "manly art," and carried a punch in which he reposed unlimited faith. The deference with which the cowboys treated him, their simple, child-like faith in his every utterance, combined to exaggerate ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach

... be a past master in the art of courtesy, I venture to submit the following hard case to your judgment. The other morning, being a none too experienced cyclist, I ventured into the Park on my "wheel" at an early ...
— Mr. Punch Awheel - The Humours of Motoring and Cycling • J. A. Hammerton

... the Major's neat pocket case and a plethoric fold of Bank of England notes bulged the neat Russia leather. He never knew that only thirteen one-pound notes made up this brave financial show of his adversary. Alan Hawke was a past master of keeping up a brave exterior and he blessed the Cook's Tourists who had that day left these small bills ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... figure in the woman's world. Social construction was a ticklish matter. There were so many things to be decided; small items of etiquette, the "proper thing" —procedure, decorations, good form, larger matters as to whether so-and-so should be received, and if so, how extensively. Ben Sansome was past master of such things. He was the only man in town who knew—or cared—how to "draw lines." He became truly a modern arbiter elegantiarum. For San Francisco had begun in real ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White

... men with something akin to admiration for the butler's impassiveness in his heart. If he knew anything, then he was a past master in the art of repression. On the other hand perhaps he didn't—and there was really no reason why he should. Eavesdropping was a common enough fault with the best of servants, and curiosity a failing of most men. Borkins ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew

... is very hard, crisp, and decisive, coupled with an occasional stop volley. His use of the half volley is unequalled in modern tennis. His overhead is severe and ordinarily reliable, although he will take serious slumps overhead. He is a past master of his own style strokes, but it is an unorthodox game that should not be copied by the ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D

... scornfully aloof—"better a native thief than an honest Yankee!" But in 1874 came a revolution in the Republican ranks. Honesty triumphed, under the lead of the elected governor, Daniel H. Chamberlain, of Massachusetts birth and education,—a remarkable man; shrewd, long-headed, a past master in political management; with high aims; by no means indifferent to personal success, but generally succeeding in combining personal and public service. With a Legislature in which two-thirds were Republicans, and whites and blacks were about equal in number, ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam

... be wondered at, therefore, that he was at forty-five past master in domestic diplomacy, knowing to a detail the private history of more than a score of families, having studied them at his ease behind their chairs, or that he knew infinitely more of the world at ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith

... was, for her very uncomely but intellectually interesting rival. In short, according to the theory of a certain ethical school, that the philosopher who discusses virtue should be thoroughly conversant with vice, Benjamin Constant was a past master in Sensibility. It was at a late period in his career, and when he had only one trial to go through (the trial of, as it seems to me, a sincere and hopeless affection for Madame Recamier), that he wrote Adolphe. But the book has nothing whatever to do with 1815, the date ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... landscape school. Gustave Courbet (born at Ornans in 1819, died in Switzerland, 1877), who might be classed both as a figure and a landscape painter, would demand by right a longer consideration than can be here given. Of his career as a champion of realism, as a past master in the peculiarly modern art of keeping one's self before the public, culminating in his connection with the Commune in Paris in 1871, and the destruction of the column in the Place Vendome, there could be much to say. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various

... was a past master in the art of graduation, and thought to go slow at first. To'oto'o was informed that he had to make ifonga for the death of O and be carried on the morrow by the taulelea to Papalangi Mativa's house behind the bakery. This ifonga, as they call it, is a sort of public ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... friend "Monte" had declined to go back after lunch with his present master to Lucero, but had chosen to accompany his past master on this expedition. His presence was an agreeable surprise. He was found surveying the party with his calm scrutiny, and apparently he approved of our spot for camping, also ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various

... below very peaceful, very inviting. The parapet would be easy to climb. He did not know whether he could dive in the approved manner—hands joined over head. He had never learned to swim, let alone dive. At any rate, he could fall off. In that art the riding-school had proved him a past master. But the spot had its disadvantages. It was too public. Perhaps other bridges might afford more privacy. He would inspect them all. It would be something to do. There was no hurry. As he was not wanted in this world, so he had no assurance of being ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke

... expert, adept, dab; dabster^, crackerjack; connoisseur &c (scholar) 492; master, master hand; prima donna [Sp.], first fiddle, top gun, chef de cuisine, top sawyer; protagonist; past master; mahatma. picked man; medallist, prizeman^. veteran; old stager, old campaigner, old soldier, old file, old hand; man of business, man of the world. nice hand, good hand, clean hand; practiced hand, experienced eye, experienced hand; marksman; good shot, dead shot, crack shot; ropedancer, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... succession without tangling them and without losing the old ones, and to lay them all down at the right moment and without confusion. Such is the narrator's task, and it was at this task that Macaulay proved himself a past master. He could dispose of a number of trivial events in a single sentence. Thus, for example, runs his account of the dramatist Wycherley's naval career: "He embarked, was present at a battle, and celebrated it, on his return, in a copy of verses too bad for the bellman." On the other hand, ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks

... is J.E.B. Stuart, as a cavalry leader second only to Jackson, and Sheridan, but with his reputation shadowed by a fatal mistake. He was a past master of the sudden and daring raid, and on more than one occasion carried consternation into the enemy's camp by a brilliant dash through it. One of his most successful raids was made around McClellan's army on the peninsula, shaking its sense of security ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson

... could be said on the matter. Adams saw all over and around his topic—no unpleasant surprise could be sprung on him—twenty-five years had he studied this one theme. He had made himself familiar with the political history of every nation so far as such history could be gathered; he was past master of ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... but there was none of that fear which comes in the faces of ordinary men when strife between men is at hand. And suddenly Terry knew that every one of the five men in the room was an old familiar of danger, every one of them a past master of gun fighting! ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand

... the shameful truth. It is undeniable I swore I loved you, and with appropriate gestures, too. But, dompnedex, madame! I am past master in these specious ecstasies, for somehow I have rarely seen the woman who had not some charm or other to catch my heart with. I confess now that you alone have never quickened it. My only purpose was through hyperbole to wheedle you out of a horse, and meanwhile to have my recreation, you ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al

... gold digger consists in finding out earlier than his rivals what large affairs are in contemplation by the government; and in this art Timar was a past master. If he took up any speculation, a whole swarm of speculators threw themselves upon it, for they knew money was to be had there ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai



Words linked to "Past master" :   expert, professional, master



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