jill of all trades
jill of all trades noun: a woman competent in many endeavors rather than only one.
Noun (1)
jill of all trades (plural jills of all trades)
- A woman competent in many endeavors rather than only one.
- Sitting in a dive in Central Square, the one where she works as a dishwasher, barmaid, jill of all trades (illegal, no papers, below-the-minimum cash payments, afternoon and early evening shifts), she stared into a mug of beer and told herself: There comes a point.1988, Janette Turner Hospital, Charades, University of Queensland Press, published 2003, →ISBN, page 268
- If you intend to work primarily in one field, that approach would be reasonable. But if you aspire to be a jack or jill of all trades, you may want to begin by looking at some general guides for nonspecialized writers.2000, Amy Einsohn, The Copyeditor's Handbook: A Guide for Book Publishing and Corporate Communications, University of California Press, published 2000, →ISBN, page 64
Noun (2) capitalized: Jill of all trades
Jill of all trades (plural Jills of all trades)
- Alternative letter-case form of jill of all trades.
- She was a people person, a bartender for years, a Jill of all trades.2006, Alice Sharpe, Duplicate Daughter, Harlequin, →ISBN
- Running a crafty biz means being a Jill of all trades, and you have to be a real self-starter (if you'll pardon the business jargon).2009, Grace Dobush, Crafty Superstar: Make Crafts on the Side, Earn Extra Cash, and Basically Have It All, North Light Books, →ISBN, page 20
Forms of jill of all trades
| plural | jills of all trades |
|---|---|
| alternative form | Jill of all trades |
| alternative form | Jill-of-all-trades |
| alternative form | jill-of-all-trades |
| plural | Jills of all trades |
Origin of jill of all trades
By analogy with jack of all trades.
Questions about jill of all trades
- What does jill of all trades mean?
- Jill of all trades means a woman competent in many endeavors rather than only one.
- What part of speech is jill of all trades?
- Jill of all trades is a noun.
- What is the plural of jill of all trades?
- The plural of jill of all trades is jills of all trades.
Words near jill of all trades in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: jill of all trades (page history and authors); Jill of all trades (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-jill of all trades.ogg.
Cite this entry: “jill of all trades.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/jill_of_all_trades. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.