English

Noun

mastery ‎(usually uncountable, plural masteries)

1. The position or authority of a master; dominion; command; supremacy; superiority.
   • Sir Walter Raleigh (ca.1554-1618)

     If divided by mountains, they will fight for the mastery of the passages of the tops.

   • 1892, James Yoxall, chapter 5, in The Lonely Pyramid:

     The desert storm was riding in its strength; the travellers lay beneath the mastery of the fell simoom. Whirling wreaths and columns of burning wind, rushed around and over them.

2. Superiority in war or competition; victory; triumph; preeminence.
   • Exodus, xxxii. 18

     The voice of them that shout for mastery.

   • 1 Corinthians, ix. 25.

     Every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things.

   • Ben Jonson (1572-1637)

     O, but to have gulled him / Had been a mastery.

3. (obsolete) Contest for superiority.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Holland to this entry?)

4. (obsolete) A masterly operation; a feat.
   • Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1343-1400)

     I will do a maistrie ere I go.

5. (obsolete) The philosopher's stone.
6. The act or process of mastering; the state of having mastered; expertise.
   • John Tillotson (1630-1694)

     He could attain to a mastery in all languages.

   • John Locke (1632-1705)

     The learning and mastery of a tongue, being unpleasant in itself, should not be cumbered with other difficulties.

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