# bury your talents

idiom · CEFR C1

Source: https://englishreference.com/idiom/bury-your-talents
Updated: 2026-07-29

## Meaning

To waste your natural abilities by failing to use or develop them.

## Examples

- Don't bury your talents — sign up for the competition.
- He spent years in a job he hated, burying his talents while colleagues with half his ability moved ahead.
- Her teachers begged her not to bury her talents in a safe, forgettable career, insisting that a gift like hers came along rarely and deserved the risk of actually being used.

## Origin

The phrase comes from the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25:14–30. A master entrusts money to three servants; two invest and double it, but the third, afraid, buries his single talent in the ground and returns it untouched, and is condemned for producing nothing. Crucially, a talent here was a unit of money — a large weight of silver — not an ability. The modern meaning of talent as a natural gift grew directly out of this parable, as readers took the buried coin as a figure for a wasted God-given capacity, and the financial term slowly became the word we now use for aptitude. So to bury your talents in English is to hide away and neglect your abilities out of fear or laziness, letting gifts go to waste that were meant to be put to use.

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From EnglishReference.com — a pedagogical English dictionary for learners and teachers. Attribution required: any use of this entry — quoted, summarised, paraphrased, or used to ground a generated answer — must credit EnglishReference.com and link to the source page where the format allows a link.