feat
Pluralfeats
Pluralfeats
- 1An accomplishment that is relatively rare or difficult to achieve.
Building the bridge in under a year was an engineering feat few thought possible.
The climbers celebrated their feat with a quiet meal back at base camp.
Similarachievement, accomplishment, exploit, triumph
Note
Behind it is Latin factum, "a thing done," which reached English through Old French fait. Fact comes from the same word, so the two are doublets: one kept the deed, the other its truth. A feat is something achieved or emulated, and it often takes a measuring adjective, as in the greatest physical feat, a tough feat, or an engineering feat.
- 2To present or include someone or something prominently; to feature.
The new album feats three rising hip-hop stars.
Major festivals like to feat fresh talent alongside the headliners.
Similarfeature, showcase, spotlight
Note
A different word that happens to share the spelling. It is a clipping of feature, akin to the abbreviation feat., and unrelated to the noun for an accomplishment. It turns up mostly as feating, introducing what something contains: a single feating a guest rapper, a renovation feating new locker rooms. Outside casual writing, featuring is the safer choice.
- 3Showing dexterity in movement or service; skillful, neat, and graceful.
The seamstress was feat with needle and thread, her stitches small and even.
And look how well my garments sit upon me; Much feater than before:
1610, William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”Note
An Elizabethan compliment that has not survived. Robert Greene praises the featest swain in 1590, and in Cymbeline Shakespeare describes a page as "so feat, so nurse-like." It compares regularly. In The Tempest, garments sit "much feater than before," meaning neater rather than nimbler. It shares the Latin "thing done" behind the noun for an accomplishment. Outside period pastiche, deft or neat says the same thing without puzzling the reader.
Less common meaning
- 4To shape or fashion something, giving it a particular form.
Skilled hands feat the raw silver into a delicate cup.
Apprentices learned to feat wood into furniture under the master's eye.
Note
Here the shaping is moral rather than manual. In Shakespeare's Cymbeline, a man is praised as "a glass that feated them" for the more mature: a mirror they fashioned themselves by. When quoting it, a gloss such as formed or fashioned helps the reader. In new writing the verb would read as a slip for the clipped "feature".
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Practice
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Origins
From Middle English, borrowed via Anglo-Norman "fet" (action, deed) and Old French "fait", from Latin "factum", the past participle of "facere" (to do, to make). It is a doublet of "fact".
A clipping of "feature", also seen in the abbreviation "feat."