English · Idiom Candidate

jack of all trades

Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

A person with many skills, but not expert in any one area

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

người có nhiều kỹ năng, nhưng không chuyên về lĩnh vực nào

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Literally: a person who is a jack, a device that can do many things

Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

The services offered are often generic and when it comes to competing for work from the SSD, ' being a Jack of all trades doesn't fit easily into the contracting culture '.

Pilots were expected to be jacks of all trades.

British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)

Sources & notes

Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.

Equivalents & related

Near equivalent một nghề cho chín còn hơn chín nghề it's better to be a master of one trade than a jack of all trades Tiếng Việt

Common questions

What does “jack of all trades” mean?

A person with many skills, but not expert in any one area Literally: a person who is a jack, a device that can do many things

Is “jack of all trades” formal or informal?

No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.

What is the closest equivalent?

“một nghề cho chín còn hơn chín nghề” (Tiếng Việt) — near equivalent.