means a natural aptitude or skill for something, often one a person is born with rather than taught

from From the Greek 'talanton,' a unit of weight and money — a large sum of silver or gold. The modern meaning grew straight out of a Bible parable (Matthew 25): a master gives his servants 'talents' of money to invest, and the ones who multiply theirs are praised while the one who buries his is condemned. Over the centuries the coin became a metaphor for the God-given gifts you're meant to use rather than waste, and by the 1400s–1600s English had quietly swapped the money for the mental and artistic gifts we mean today.