Jill of all trades but mistress of none

English

Noun

Jill of all trades but mistress of none (plural not attested)

1. Alternative form of Jill of all trades, mistress of none.
   • 1876 August 2, W. H. Hurlbert, “Too Much Mother-in-law”, in Grant County Advocate, volume II, number 43, Lancaster, front page, column 5:

     With an assorted lot of wives, including a seamstress, a housekeeper, a laundress, a female physician and a governess, he would be enabled to enter upon co-operative housekeeping with peculiar advantages denied to the miserable mongonist^[sic] whose wife so frequently is not only Jill of all domestic trades but mistress of none.

   • 1920 September 12, The Lounger, “At the Street Corner”, in The Daily Colonist, sixty-second year, number 231, Victoria, B.C., page 28, column 4:

     The consequence is that the children become Independent in their views and practices, wander from one job to another, according to the rate of pay, and grow up to be Jacks and Jills of all trades, but masters and mistresses of none.

   • 1983 August 28, Mary Hart, “Managing a class reunion: It’s a picnic, but it’s no picnic”, in Minneapolis Tribune, volume CXVII, number 21, Minneapolis, Minn., page 1K, column 3:

     [Barbara Skovran] Schaller describes herself as a “Jill of all trades, but a mistress of none.” As the unofficial food chairperson, she planned for weeks what she would take.

   • 2007 October 26, Ruth Deinzer, “I am voting for Marilyn Lichtenberg”, in AIM West Milford, page W 4, column 3:

     She [Marilyn Lichtenberg] has said she is a Jill of all trades but mistress of none and “The woods would be very empty if no birds sang there except those that sang the best.”

   • 2010, Manon Tremblay, “Conclusion”, in Käthe Roth, transl., Quebec Women and Legislative Representation, Vancouver, B.C., Toronto, Ont.: UBC Press, →ISBN, page 194:

     A little like an all-season tire that performs disappointingly in snow but saves a few pennies and allows the driver to avoid waiting in line at the garage, the model contained in the bill, meant to be consensual, is a “Jill of all trades but mistress of none.”

   • 2014, Joyce Lishman, Chris Yuill, Jillian Brannan, Alastair Gibson, editors, Social Work: An Introduction, SAGE Publications, →ISBN:

     Along different lines, Brand et al. (2005: 57), citing Williams, point to some of the difficulties social work has faced due to being seen as ‘a Jill of all trades but mistress of none’.

   • 2016, Robert Laynton, “Males and females are different”, in Staying on Top of Your Woman: A Man's Guide to Dealing With the Women in His Life, 2nd edition, →ISBN, page 36:

     The more attention she pays to peripheral events in the immediate present, then the more mistakes she will start to make and the slower her rate of work will become. These errors are multi-tasking failures. In effect, she becomes a 'Jill of all trades but mistress of none' - which is what multi-tasking means.