- amateur
- amateur, dilettante, dabbler, tyro denote a person who follows a pursuit without attaining proficiency or a professional status.Amateur may denote one who has a taste or liking for something rather than an expert knowledge of it; in this sense it is distinguished from connoisseur{
an amateur of cameos
}{affected the pose of the gentleman amateur of the arts— F. H. Ellis
}Amateur is also applied to a person whose participation in an activity requiring skill is due. to a personal rather than a professional interest. It usually but not invariably implies a lack of mastery. This latter implication is not often found in sports, where a technical distinction between an amateur (one who competes without remuneration) and a professional (one who competes for reward) prevails. In other use the word is opposed to expert and adept, as well as professional. Sometimes it suggests lack of experience or apprenticeship{every artist was first an amateur— Emerson
}sometimes it connotes indulgence in a particular pursuit as a pastime or as an avocation{how could an amateur venture out and make an exhibition of himself after such splendid rowing!— Jefferies
}Very often, especially in contrast to expert or adept, it connotes superficiality, bungling, or indifference to professional standards{it is beginning to be hinted that we are a nation of amateurs— Rosebery
}{the third earl of Shaftesbury . . . illustrated this unsystematic method of thinking. He was an amateur, an aristocratic amateur, careless of consistency— Ellis
}Dilettante is applied to an amateur (in the older underogatory sense of that word) in the fine arts (see AESTHETE). It stresses enjoyment rather than effort, a frittering rather than a concentration of one’s energies, and, sometimes, the point of view of the aesthete{the dilettante lives an easy, butterfly life, knowing nothing of . . . toil and labor— Osler
}{we continue to respect the erudite mind, and to decry the appreciative spirit as amateurish and dilettante— Benson
}Dabbler implies a lack of serious purpose, but it suggests desultory habits of work and lack of persistence{your dabblers in metaphysics are the most dangerous creatures breathing— Tucker
}{the certainty of touch which marks the difference between an artist and the dabbler . . . can come only after patient study— Wendell
}Tyro does not necessarily imply youth but does suggest comparable inexperience or audacity with resulting incompetence or crudeness{it may be fancy on the part of a tyro in music to suggest that a change from poetry to prose occurs when Beethoven introduces in the last movement of the Choral Symphony . . . a subject in words— Alexander
}{“a noble theme! ” the tyro cried, and straightway scribbled off a sonnet. “A noble theme, ” the poet sighed, “I am not fit to write upon it”— Wells
}Analogous words: *novice, apprentice, probationerAntonyms: professional: expertContrasted words: adept, wizard, virtuoso (see EXPERT)
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
