Talent is one of those words with a thousand pet definitions. Personally, I see the word used most often a kind of negative rationalization. A way to disregard

Talent is one of those words with a thousand pet definitions. Personally, I see the word used most often a kind of negative rationalization. A way to disregard success as lacking in effort, to say it's inborn, incidental. I'd generally prefer to be described and to describe people as passionate, dedicated, capable or plain smart rather than talented. I think those traits, often in combination with a lot of thought/practice, but not necessarily direct experience are the things that add up to what's often described as talent.