What is "talent"

Talent \Tal"ent\, n. [F., fr. L. talentum a talent (in sense 1), Gr. ? a balance, anything weighed, a definite weight, a talent; akin to ? to bear, endure, ?, L. tolerare, tollere, to lift up, sustain, endure. See Thole, v. t., Tolerate.]

1. Among the ancient Greeks, a weight and a denomination of money equal to 60 min[ae] or 6,000 drachm[ae]. The Attic talent, as a weight, was about 57 lbs. avoirdupois; as a denomination of silver money, its value was [pounds]243 15s. sterling, or about $1,180.

   Rowing vessel whose burden does not exceed five hundred talents.
   --Jowett (Thucid.).

2. Among the Hebrews, a weight and denomination of money. For silver it was equivalent to 3,000 shekels, and in weight was equal to about 93? lbs. avoirdupois; as a denomination of silver, it has been variously estimated at from [pounds]340 to [pounds]396 sterling, or about $1,645 to $1,916. For gold it was equal to 10,000 gold shekels.

3. Inclination; will; disposition; desire. [Obs.]

   They rather counseled you to your talent than to your profit.
   --Chaucer.

4. Intellectual ability, natural or acquired; mental endowment or capacity; skill in accomplishing; a special gift, particularly in business, art, or the like; faculty; a use of the word probably originating in the Scripture parable of the talents (
   --Matt. xxv. 14-30).

   He is chiefly to be considered in his three different talents, as a critic, a satirist, and a writer of odes.
   --Dryden.

   His talents, his accomplishments, his graceful manners, made him generally popular.
   --Macaulay.

   Syn: Ability; faculty; gift; endowment. See Genius.

late 13c., "inclination, disposition, will, desire," from Old French talent (12c.), from Medieval Latin talenta, plural of talentum "inclination, leaning, will, desire" (11c.), in classical Latin "balance, weight; sum of money," from Greek talanton "a balance, pair of scales," hence "weight, definite weight, anything weighed," and in later times sum of money," from PIE *tele- "to lift, support, weigh," "with derivatives referring to measured weights and thence money and payment" [Watkins]; see extol.\n\nAn ancient denomination of weight, originally Babylonian (though the name is Greek), and varying widely in value among different peoples and at different times.

[Century Dictionary]

n. 1 (label en historical) A unit of weight and money used in ancient times in Greece, the Roman Empire, and the Middle East. (from 9^thc.) 2 (label en obsolete) A desire or inclination for something. (14^th-16^thc.)

1. n. natural qualities or talents [syn: endowment, gift, natural endowment]

2. a person who possesses unusual innate ability in some field or activity

Talent can refer to:

• Aptitude, a talent is a group of aptitudes useful for some activities; talents may refer to aptitudes themselves
• Talent (measurement)

Talent is a play written by Victoria Wood, first performed in 1978. It centres on two friends, one of whom is about to enter a talent contest in a run down nightclub. Commissioned for the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield, it received much acclaim and transferred to a London run in 1979. That same year a television adaptation was broadcast. It was the first time Victoria Wood and Julie Walters appeared together on TV.

A mixture of dialogue and music, one of its tunes inspired The Smiths song Rusholme Ruffians. The script was published by Methuen in 1988, along with another play by Wood, Good Fun.

Talent is a comic book series written by Christopher Golden and Tom Sniegoski, drawn by Paul Azaceta, published by Boom! Studios.

Talent (foaled 25 February 2010) is a British Thoroughbred racehorse, best known for winning the classic Oaks Stakes in 2013.

The talent (, from Ancient Greek: , talanton 'scale, balance, sum') was one of several ancient units of mass, a commercial weight, as well as corresponding units of value equivalent to these masses of a precious metal. The talent of gold was known to Homer, who described how Achilles gave a half-talent of gold to Antilochus as a prize. It was approximately the mass of water required to fill an amphora. A Greek, or Attic talent, was , a Roman talent was , an Egyptian talent was , and a Babylonian talent was . Ancient Israel, and other Levantine countries, adopted the Babylonian talent, but later revised the mass. The heavy common talent, used in New Testament times, was .

An Attic talent of silver was the value of nine man-years of skilled work. During the Peloponnesian War, an Attic talent was the amount of silver that would pay a month's wages of a trireme crew of 200 men. Hellenistic mercenaries were commonly paid one drachma per day of military service. There were 6,000 drachmae in an Attic talent.

The Babylonians, Sumerians, and Hebrews divided a talent into 60 minas, each of which was subdivided into 60 shekels. The Greek also used the ratio of 60 minas to one talent. A Greek mina was approximately 434 ± 3 grams. A Roman talent was 100 libra. A libra is exactly three quarters of a Greek mina, so a Roman talent is 1.25 Greek talents. An Egyptian talent was 80 librae.

The talent as a unit of value is mentioned in the New Testament in Jesus' parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30). This parable is the origin of the use of the word "talent" to mean "gift or skill" in English and other languages. Luke includes a different parable involving the mina. According to Epiphanius, the talent is called mina (maneh) among the Hebrews, and was the equivalent in weight to one-hundred denarii. The talent is found in another parable of Jesus where a servant who is forgiven a debt of ten thousand talents refuses to forgive another servant who owes him only one hundred silver denarii. The talent is also used elsewhere in the Bible, as when describing the material invested in the Ark of the Covenant. Solomon received 666 gold talents a year.

Talent (1986), is a photographic work by David Robbins comprising eighteen photographs that depict contemporary artists such as Cindy Sherman, Jeff Koons, Jenny Holzer, Robert Longo, and fourteen others using the headshot portraits long-utilized by the entertainment industry.

To make the 8 x 10, black-and-white photographs Robbins hired the James J. Kriegsmann studio, a company specializing in headshot photography. During the several-month long period of making the photographs in Kriegsmann's Times Square studio in New York, Robbins functioned as the "agent" for the artists – scheduling the shoots, styling the artists' look, and paying the bill. The resultant collection of headshots were produced in an edition of 100 as, according to the Kriegsmann Studio, aspiring entertainers seeking work customarily order them.

Talent updated the image of the artist from that of modern art's tortured genius to, instead, a more complex portrayal of a willing participant in the entertainment industry. The piece was instrumental in modernizing the art context for the Information Age. Visual artists such as Degas and Picasso had long depicted musicians, harlequins, and actors using fine art media, and the Pop artists had introduced commercial production techniques such as silkscreen to create images taken from popular culture, but Talent collapsed the distance at which visual artists had previously held entertainment culture.

The eighteen artists featured in the piece include Cindy Sherman, Jeff Koons, Jenny Holzer, Robert Longo, Allan McCollum, Ashley Bickerton, Michael J. Byron, Thomas Lawson, Clegg & Guttmann, Jennifer Bolande, Larry Johnson, Alan Belcher, Peter Nagy, Steven Parrino, Joel Otterson, Robin Weglinski, Gretchen Bender, and David Robbins.

In May 2012 artist Michelle Grabner curated "25 Years of Talent," an exhibition at Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, featuring later work from each of the artists included in the original piece.