technical
Pluraltechnicals
- 1Relating specifically to a particular field, subject, or area of expertise.
The paper used technical vocabulary specific to molecular biology.
In legal writing, 'consideration' has a technical meaning quite different from its everyday one.
UsageCommon in a technical term and in the technical sense of a word, for the narrower meaning inside one field.
Similarspecialized, specialist
Oppositegeneral
Note
A word used in a technical sense means something narrower inside its field than outside it, as spin does in particle physics. Asaf Darr's Selling Technology (2006) sets technical skills beside social ones as two halves of the same job.
- 2Relating to technology or its use.
The company hired more staff for its technical support team.
Most technical roles at the firm require coding skills.
UsageClose to technological, but technical is the usual word for jobs and help (technical support); technological is more often about advances and change.
Similartechnological
Oppositenontechnical
- 3Relating to or needing technique or special skill, as in a sport, an art or a difficult route.
The routine demanded a high level of technical precision from each skater.
Critics admired the technical mastery in her violin performance.
Note
Closest to the Greek root's meaning of skill, this sense describes how well a craft is executed. It is often set against the expressive side of a performance, as in technical virtuosity that lacks inspiration. Sport uses it for terrain that tests handling. Robert Dineen's Kings of the Road (2015) describes technical bends on a cycling course, corners that reward a rider's skill.
Checked 5 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- The Greek root means skill or craft. en.wiktionary.org
- Robert Dineen wrote Kings of the Road, published in 2015. en.wiktionary.org
- The book describes technical bends on a cycling course. en.wiktionary.org
- 4Hard to understand for people who lack specialized knowledge of the field.
The lecture became too technical for the general audience to follow.
He simplified the technical parts so beginners could understand.
UsageOften with too, quite or get (too technical, getting technical), often as a polite warning that something will be hard to follow.
Similarcomplex, complicated
Oppositesimple, accessible
Note
Here the field's narrowness becomes the outsider's problem: what belongs to the specialist sense is, seen from outside, hard going.
- 5Skilled and comfortable working with science and technology.
The team needed a technical hire who understood both hardware and software.
He's a deeply technical engineer who loves solving hardware puzzles.
UsageSaid of people, often after a verb or very: she's very technical, a technical person.
Similartech-savvy
Oppositenontechnical
Note
Said of people rather than things: someone who is technical is at ease with machines and science, the colleague who can get the printer working. For devices, jobs and fields themselves, the technology sense does the work instead.
- 6Relating to the internal mechanics of a market rather than to more basic or fundamental factors.
Analysts described the sell-off as technical, driven by automated trading rather than company fundamentals.
The rally looked technical, fueled by traders covering short positions.
Oppositefundamental
Note
Market analysts use it for price moves that come from a market's own workings rather than from the underlying business or economy. The classic collocation is a technical rally, where prices bounce because the market had become oversold, not because the news improved. Its counterpart in the same vocabulary is fundamental, the label for causes outside the trading itself.
- 7True or applying only under a strict reading of a rule or definition, rather than in substance or in spirit.
The victory was purely technical, awarded only because the rival missed the deadline.
The lawyer argued that filing a day late was only a technical breach that harmed no one.
UsageOften after only or purely: only a technical breach, a purely technical win.
Oppositereal, actual, practical
Note
A legal-sounding qualifier that concedes the letter of a rule while hinting that the substance is missing. Such a result can still count, as a technical win does. A technical trespass, such as cutting across a lawn to reach a mailbox, is trespass on paper only.
Less common meanings
- 8Ellipsis of technical foul.
The official whistled a technical after the player argued the call.
Her second technical of the night resulted in an automatic ejection.
UsageReferees call a technical on a player or coach, and that person gets a technical.
Note
Basketball shortens technical foul to its modifier, and the clipped noun is the everyday courtside form. The foul covers infractions that involve no physical contact during play, along with fouls committed by someone who is not a player on the court. The same clipping, keeping the adjective and dropping the noun, produces the school and the rehearsal senses.
Checked 5 Nov 2026 · 4 facts
- The basketball noun technical is an ellipsis of technical foul. en.wiktionary.org
- Technical fouls cover non-contact infractions during play. official.nba.com
- Technical fouls can be committed by people other than players on the court. official.nba.com
- The school and rehearsal senses likewise omit the noun following technical. en.wiktionary.org
- 9Ellipsis of technical school.
Note
Another clipped noun, like the basketball foul. The full phrase is technical school, the kind that trains people in practical skills such as welding, hairdressing and plumbing. It is often set against a university, naming the practical route as opposed to the academic one.
- 10Ellipsis of technical rehearsal.
UsageMostly backstage talk; in formal writing, the full phrase technical rehearsal is the safer choice.
Note
Theater's clipped name for the technical rehearsal: the run-through devoted to lighting, stage arrangement and the other machinery of a show rather than to the acting.
- 11Ellipsis of technical course.
Note
A clipped noun: the adjective stands in for the whole phrase technical course, and the noun it modified drops away. Several other nouns are built the same way, among them the clipping for a school, and all share the plural technicals. Context has to tell them apart. On a timetable or a course schedule, a technical is a class you add, take or drop.
Checked 5 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- The noun technical is formed by omitting course from technical course. en.wiktionary.org
- Other elliptical senses include technical school and technical examination. en.wiktionary.org
- These noun senses have the plural technicals. en.wiktionary.org
- 12Ellipsis of technical examination.
She aced the technical, so the company invited her back to meet the rest of the team.
Apprentice electricians take a written test first, then the technical, where an examiner watches them wire a panel.
Note
Built the same way as the course clipping, this one names a hurdle rather than a class. Candidates clear, pass or fail a technical, often as one stage before another, such as a final interview. Because the same spelling can also mean a course or a school, context does the sorting: a technical that someone clears or fails on the way to a job is a test.
Checked 5 Nov 2026 · 1 fact
- The examination sense and the course sense are both formed by ellipsis. en.wiktionary.org
- 13A pickup truck with a gun mounted on it, used as an improvised fighting vehicle.
Rebel forces patrolled the border in technicals fitted with anti-aircraft guns.
The militia rolled into town on a battered technical.
Note
A conflict-zone noun that in 2007 still came with an introduction: a speaker quoted by Jeffrey Gettleman in The New York Times spoke of trucks mounted with antiaircraft guns, "known as 'technicals.'" It takes the regular plural, technicals, and keeps military company: militias, mounted guns, and battlewagons, the same speaker's near-synonym for the same improvised vehicle.
Checked 5 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- Jeffrey Gettleman's article containing the quotation was published in 2007. en.wiktionary.org
- The quoted speaker described trucks mounted with antiaircraft guns as technicals. en.wiktionary.org
- The same speaker used battlewagons for the vehicles he called technicals. en.wiktionary.org
- 14In certain fighting games, a special move that cancels out the effect of an opponent's attack.
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Origin
Built from Late Latin technicus plus the suffix -al. The Latin word was taken over from Ancient Greek tekhnikós, itself based on tékhnē, meaning "skill."