The Collaborative International Dictionary
Practice \Prac"tice\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Practiced; p. pr. & vb. n. Practicing.] [Often written practise, practised, practising.]
To do or perform frequently, customarily, or habitually; to make a practice of; as, to practice gaming. ``Incline not my heart . . . practice wicked works.''
--Ps. cxli. 4.-
To exercise, or follow, as a profession, trade, art, etc., as, to practice law or medicine.
2. To exercise one's self in, for instruction or improvement, or to acquire discipline or dexterity; as, to practice gunnery; to practice music.
4. To put into practice; to carry out; to act upon; to commit; to execute; to do. ``Aught but Talbot's shadow whereon to practice your severity.''
--Shak.As this advice ye practice or neglect.
--Pope.5. To make use of; to employ. [Obs.]
In malice to this good knight's wife, I practiced Ubaldo and Ricardo to corrupt her.
--Massinger.6. To teach or accustom by practice; to train.
In church they are taught to love God; after church they are practiced to love their neighbor.
--Landor.
Practiced \Prac"ticed\, a. [Often written practised.]
Experienced; expert; skilled; as, a practiced marksman. ``A practiced picklock.''
--Ld. Lytton.Used habitually; learned by practice.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
"expert," 1560s, past participle adjective from practice (v.).
Wiktionary
skillful, proficient, knowledgeable or expert as a result of practice v
(en-past of: practice)
WordNet
adj. having or showing knowledge and skill and aptitude; "adept in handicrafts"; "an adept juggler"; "an expert job"; "a good mechanic"; "a practiced marksman"; "a proficient engineer"; "a lesser-known but no less skillful composer"; "the effect was achieved by skillful retouching" [syn: adept, expert, good, proficient, skillful, skilful]
skillful after much practice [syn: practised]
Usage examples of "practiced".
His armor gaped open, and, with a deft twist of his wrist, Basse threw the dagger, an underhand motion, a flat trajectory, powerful and true, he had practiced since he was six.
Dostoevsky himself had once strongly sympathized with French Utopian Socialism in its initial, semi-Christian form, and he knew very well that, even in its Russian metamorphosis of the 1860s, it bore little resemblance to the unbridled amorality preached and practiced by Peter Verkhovensky.
Some of his Lyceum verses are exercises in the forms practiced by Zhukovsky and Derzhavin, but by far the greater part belong to the favorite Arzamasian kinds of fugitive poetry, friendly epistles, and Anacreontic lyrics.
We learn, moreover, that this mode of instruction was adopted in 1761, so that for more than a century these atrocious operations have been practiced on animals in French veterinary schools.
Maybe there was something to the simpering, helpless, batting-the-eyelashes style of coquettishness practiced by these antebellum women.
He practiced all he could, while Cho also gave him a grounding in the Atlantean language.
In 1907, the family emigrated to New Zealand where her husband practiced medicine in Te Aroha until his passing in 1912, after which Mrs Axford moved to Auckland so as to educate her three children.
She was an expert pilot and had practiced autorotation hundreds of times.
He had been amused to note that there was a night not long after the night of Optol when he had urged her to abstain from further indulgence in a certain diversion that had no name that anyone used, an Avernian pleasure the penalties against which were so severe that one would not compromise himself so far as admitting that he knew it existed and was practiced.
Thwarted, she ran her practiced eye over the Ayurveda medical shop and walked toward it, focusing and framing a picture as she went.
There are boatloads of religions and thousands of ways religion is organized and practiced.
A courtship ritual that I find appealing is practiced by the bowerbirds of New Guinea and Australia.
The individual was at the far end of the island, standing with his back to a grove of trees, giving Burkitt ample room for setting his vehicle down, which he I did with practiced ease.
There was no uncertainty in his voice, his eyes were now fathomless pools of sherry, meeting her gaze fully, dead-on, in the manner of a practiced cardplayer, and her will seemed to weaken immeasurably.
Sometimes with elaborate brakes that let the practiced carnie stop on an empty number, sometimes with a slide that lets him skip a number with a lot of money on it.