deft

Rahele Jomepour Bell’s deft use of acrylic paint and soft pastels evokes a world of hazy tranquility, a palette of greens, golds and oranges imbuing each page with a palpable warmth.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 14, 2026

Greenspan exhibited a deft touch with financial markets, saying the barest minimum in his statements but seemingly always conveying what traders wanted to hear.

From MarketWatch ● Jun. 22, 2026

Hockney’s largest canvas — at more than 7 feet tall and 20 feet wide — is filled with deft lines and Hockney’s signature swirls.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 12, 2026

Borgli’s deft mixture of punchy dark humor and thorny subjects makes for a distinctly American movie that only a Norwegian could think up.

From Salon ● Jun. 10, 2026

Alice was kneeling in front of her, facing away, as the woman bent over her and with deft fingers wove her hair into complex braids, twisting flowers into it as she did.

From "The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage" by Philip Pullman

Andrew Bayliss, the author of “Sparta: The Rise and Fall of an Ancient Superpower,” is a defter writer than Xenophon.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 25, 2026

In between the defter displays, Johnny Rockett, the clown, lampoons various circus skills.

From New York Times ● Nov. 25, 2022

Whatever one may wonder about Özil’s motivations, he has shown a defter touch on social media than most of his teammates have managed on the pitch since the season began.

From The Guardian ● Dec. 30, 2020

Ensuring that a spectator relates to all of these characters and events requires a defter hand than either Sanders or Goldman displays.

From Washington Post ● Nov. 3, 2015

The wit, a jocose fencing-master, Mr. Cornelius Kelly, now fenced with words, and in all his life never did defter work.

From Oliver Goldsmith by E. S. Lang Buckland

HBO’s “True Detective: Night Country” is the deftest revival of a dead franchise I’ve seen in a long time, and “Dune: Prophecy” is an elegant extension of a cinematic phenomenon.

From Salon ● Dec. 27, 2024

I remember late in the day on the windswept Friday standing behind the 14th green as he conjured the deftest of chips to get up and down from another missed green.

From BBC ● Apr. 15, 2024

Victoria Jones is a very amiable student from Lancashire who begins talking to me a mile a minute in a way that would defeat the deftest shorthand practitioner.

From The Guardian ● Sep. 5, 2017

Jay Roach’s movie follows the tribulations—and exhausted triumphs—of Dalton Trumbo, one of the deftest of American screenwriters.

From The New Yorker ● Nov. 9, 2015

Obedient to his master's will, A great magician, trained in ill, With deftest art surpassing thought That marvellous illusion wrought.

From The Rámáyan of Válmíki, translated into English verse by Ralph T. H. (Ralph Thomas Hotchkin) Griffith