jack of all trades
Pluraljacks of all trades
- 1Someone competent in many different activities or kinds of work, sometimes regarded as excelling at none of them.
As the restaurant's only manager, she became a jack of all trades, handling payroll, repairs, and the occasional shift on the grill.
He's a jack of all trades, but the company needs someone who truly excels at database design.
Similarall-rounder, generalist, factotum
Oppositespecialist
Note
Its jack is a typical fellow, not anyone's name, and the phrase was already in print in 1618. On its own it can be plain praise (Dickens's Wemmick calls himself his own Jack of all Trades) and the doubt comes from the longer saying, jack of all trades, master of none. It is also hyphenated, jack-of-all-trades, and the plural is jacks of all trades.
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Origin
From jack ("typical man, fellow") + of + all + trades.