Deft means skillful and quick, especially with your hands. A deft chef can slice vegetables into perfect, paper-thin pieces without even looking. A deft basketball player steals the ball so smoothly that opponents barely realize what happened.

The word captures skill combined with effortless grace. When you're deft at something, you make difficult tasks look easy. A deft seamstress threads a needle on the first try, even in dim light. A deft writer chooses exactly the right words without struggling over every sentence.

You can be deft with ideas too, not just physical tasks. A student who gives a deft answer to a tricky question shows both intelligence and quickness of mind. Someone might handle a delicate situation with deft diplomacy, knowing just what to say to help everyone get along.

The opposite of deft is clumsy or awkward. Where a clumsy person fumbles and stumbles, a deft person moves with precision and confidence. Becoming deft at something takes practice: a pianist develops deft fingers through years of scales and exercises, and a sculptor gains deft hands by working with clay day after day.