"past master" meaning in English

See past master in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: past masters [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun}} past master (plural past masters)
  1. One who has an extremely high level of ability or knowledge within an area of achievement or expertise. Synonyms: expert, guru, skilled person
    Sense id: en-past_master-en-noun-nCgRsJqz Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 51 49
  2. (Freemasonry) Someone who has previously been a master at a given lodge. Categories (topical): Freemasonry
    Sense id: en-past_master-en-noun-FVNLGQDR Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 51 49 Topics: Freemasonry, freemasonry, lifestyle
The following are not (yet) sense-disambiguated
Synonyms: passed master [archaic], past-master, pastmaster

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for past master meaning in English (2.3kB)

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  "forms": [
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      "form": "past masters",
      "tags": [
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  "head_templates": [
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      "expansion": "past master (plural past masters)",
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  "lang": "English",
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  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "_dis": "51 49",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
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          "source": "w+disamb"
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      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1907, Fergus Hume, chapter 27, in The Green Mummy",
          "text": "Hervey responded with such volubility that anyone could see he was a pastmaster in Castilian swearing.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2007 May 21, Richard Corliss, Mary Corliss, “Cannes Journal: Mighty Hearts and Dark Deeds”, in Time",
          "text": "Winterbottom is a past master at lending the traditional story-telling format to real stories of the modern world at war.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "One who has an extremely high level of ability or knowledge within an area of achievement or expertise."
      ],
      "id": "en-past_master-en-noun-nCgRsJqz",
      "links": [
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        [
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        ],
        [
          "ability",
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        ],
        [
          "knowledge",
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        ],
        [
          "area",
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        [
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      "glosses": [
        "Someone who has previously been a master at a given lodge."
      ],
      "id": "en-past_master-en-noun-FVNLGQDR",
      "links": [
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          "Freemasonry",
          "Freemasonry"
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        [
          "master",
          "master#Noun"
        ],
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        ]
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(Freemasonry) Someone who has previously been a master at a given lodge."
      ],
      "topics": [
        "Freemasonry",
        "freemasonry",
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    }
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  "synonyms": [
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      "_dis1": "54 46",
      "tags": [
        "archaic"
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      "word": "passed master"
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    {
      "_dis1": "54 46",
      "word": "past-master"
    },
    {
      "_dis1": "54 46",
      "word": "pastmaster"
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  "word": "past master"
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{
  "categories": [
    "English countable nouns",
    "English entries with incorrect language header",
    "English lemmas",
    "English multiword terms",
    "English nouns",
    "Requests for review of Manx translations"
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  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "past masters",
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  "senses": [
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      "categories": [
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1907, Fergus Hume, chapter 27, in The Green Mummy",
          "text": "Hervey responded with such volubility that anyone could see he was a pastmaster in Castilian swearing.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2007 May 21, Richard Corliss, Mary Corliss, “Cannes Journal: Mighty Hearts and Dark Deeds”, in Time",
          "text": "Winterbottom is a past master at lending the traditional story-telling format to real stories of the modern world at war.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "One who has an extremely high level of ability or knowledge within an area of achievement or expertise."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "extremely",
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          "high",
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        {
          "word": "skilled person"
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        "Someone who has previously been a master at a given lodge."
      ],
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        [
          "master",
          "master#Noun"
        ],
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        ]
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      "raw_glosses": [
        "(Freemasonry) Someone who has previously been a master at a given lodge."
      ],
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      ]
    }
  ],
  "synonyms": [
    {
      "tags": [
        "archaic"
      ],
      "word": "passed master"
    },
    {
      "word": "past-master"
    },
    {
      "word": "pastmaster"
    }
  ],
  "word": "past master"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-26 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (93a6c53 and 21a9316). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.