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Characterized by ingenuity or art; finely fashioned; skillfully wrought; elegant; graceful; nice; neat. [Archaic] " The queynte ring." " His queynte spear." Chaucer. " A shepherd young quaint." Chapman. Every look was coy and wondrous quaint. Spenser. To show bow quaint an orator you are. Shak.

In a raw manner; unskillfully; without experience.

Armed with a net; hence, skillful to entangle. Scholastic retiary versatility of logic. Coleridge.

Of untaught manners; unpolished; of low rank; uncivil; clownish; ignorant; raw; unskillful; -- said of persons, or of conduct, skill, and the like. "Mine ancestors were rude." Chaucer. He was but rude in the profession of arms. Sir H. Wotton. the rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. Gray.

Knowing; skillful. [Obs.] Cockeram.

To score, not by skillful play but by some fortunate chance of the game. [Cant, U.S.]

To write unskillfully and inelegantly. Though with a golden pen you scrawl. Swift.

Skillful in, or fond of, writing. [Obs.] Barrow.

Any particular art. [Obs.] Learned in one skill, and in another kind of learning unskillful. Hooker.

ited with readiness and dexterity in its application; familiarly acquainted with; expert; skillful; -- often followed by in; as, a person skilled in drawing or geometry.

Dexterous in performing an action, so as to escape notice; nimble; skillful; cautious; shrewd; knowing; -- in a good sense. Be ye sly as serpents, and simple as doves. Wyclif (Matt. x. 16). Whom graver age And long experience hath made wise and sly. Fairfax.

Skillful; clever; crafty. [Obs.] Cudworth.

To play on an instrument of music, or as on an instrument, in an unskillful or noisy way; to thrum; as, to strum a piano.

One versed in tactics; hence, a skillful maneuverer; an adroit manager.

A cook. [Obs.] The skillfulest trencher-men of Media. Sir P. Sidney.

ll, or the like, are strictly observed. A man, in questions of this kind, is able to be a skillful umpire between himself and others. Barrow.

Knowing; intelligent; skillful; as, he is an understanding man.

Not feat; not dexterous; unskillful; clumsy. [Obs.] Sir P. Sidney.

Want of skill; ignorance; unskillfulness. [Obs.] Sylvester.

Skillful in finding the way; well acquainted with the way or route; wise from having traveled.