a. [f. TALENT sb. + -LESS.] Devoid of talent; not mentally gifted.
1803. Elements of Opposition, 3. If you wish to disparage the [Prime] Minister himself, call him … ‘a low, talentless man.’
1819. Madame de Genlis, trans. New Æra, I. i. 2. Tyrants, knaves, villains, fools and heroes, some emphatic actors, many talentless declaimers, reciting in a style of bad taste, and giving currency to ideas as false as they were commonplace.
1827. Lady Morgan, O’Briens & O’Flahertys, II. iv. 154–5. Dull as the Dutchman from whom they were descended, tasteless, as they were talentless, they had yet given princes to the church, and commanders to the army.
1831. Fraser’s Mag., IV. 180. ‘Misapplied talent,’ cry the talentless.
1846. H. W. Torrens, Rem. Milit. Hist., 78. The Romans, whose talentless leaders in the early wars of the republic seem to have been prone to depend on the soldier rather than themselves.
1898. Westm. Gaz., 11 May, 3/2. Dreadful daubs, showing nothing but talentless ambition.
1921. A. France, La Vie en Fleur, in The Dial, LXXI. Dec., 688. The envious pack will never stop barking at your heels; the innumerable army of the talentless which fills the theatres and the editorial rooms will spy upon your actions and make them into crimes, they will overwhelm you with outrage.
