VERSATILE • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Versatile

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/vˈərsətəl/ /vərsətˈaɪl/ Listen

adjective

Versatile adj.

Capable of being turned round.

Liable to be turned in opinion; changeable; variable; unsteady; inconstant; as, a versatile disposition.

Turning with ease from one thing to another; readily applied to a new task, or to various subjects; many-sided; as, versatile genius; a versatile politician. "Conspicuous among the youths of high promise... was the quick and versatile (Charles) Montagu."

(Nat. Hist.) Capable of turning; freely movable; as, a versatile anther, which is fixed at one point to the filament, and hence is very easily turned around; a versatile toe of a bird.

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Etymology of 'Versatile'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Versatile" Quotes from Famous Books

... Carlyle's French Revolution. As a comic dramatist he ranks second only to Moliere. He supported the Revolution with his money and his versatile powers of speech and writing. He edited an edition de luxe ...

— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... omnivorous and versatile—his mind is unceasingly active, his grasp wide. Whatever he writes will be ...

— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott

... "The Fashionable World." I have sought in each to make the general composition in some harmony with the principal figure in the foreground. Pelham is represented as almost wholly unsusceptible to the more poetical influences. He has the physical compound, which, versatile and joyous, amalgamates easily with the world—he views life with the lenient philosophy that Horace commends in Aristippus: he laughs at the follies he shares; and is ever ready to turn into uses ultimately (if indirectly) serious, the frivolities that only serve to sharpen his wit, ...

— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... he himself be lacking in all appreciation of them, and, if he be so lacking, no amount of explanation will avail to give him understanding. Borrow, in one of his sermons, declared concerning wit: "It is, indeed, a thing so versatile, multiform, appearing in so many shapes and garbs, so variously apprehended of several eyes and judgments, that it seemeth no less hard to settle a clear and certain notion thereof than to make a portrait of Proteus, or to define ...

— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous

... is one of the most versatile words in Italian. Its literal meaning is from; it is daily used to express to. Da me may mean from me: it may also mean to me. Fit or deserving to be done is a common meaning of it; and it is in this sense that Dante uses it in the following passage from the fourth ...

— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various

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