dilettante

“I’m not coming at this like some kind of social dilettante billionaire who thinks he’s God’s gift,” he said.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 19, 2026

The reason for its omission, one assumes, was the likely conclusion by the editors that Maugham was but a dilettante, not an expert, who believed that Zurbarán “was no genius.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 24, 2026

"I like facts, I like knowledge, I like having wide interests. There's various ways of describing such a person, dilettante might be one way and polymath might be another."

From BBC ● Nov. 29, 2025

It is an expert on some subjects and a dilettante on others.

From New York Times ● Mar. 14, 2023

Charles wasn’t a dilettante; he was serious about the breeding and created his own new lines of pigeons.

From "Charles and Emma: The Darwins' Leap of Faith" by Deborah Heiligman

Momoa is more introspective, careful never to imply that his friends in the sector — Dwayne Johnson, with Teremana Tequila, and Ryan Reynolds, with Aviation Gin — are dilettantes.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 12, 2023

She and Steven Weber play Debbie and Stew Klein, a couple of boomer dilettantes who crash their kid’s married life with the news that they’re in debt.

From New York Times ● Feb. 5, 2020

Rabid Stranger Things fans, rabid Stranger Things dilettantes, and rabid Stranger Things newbies alike have a lot to look forward to, assuming they develop a cure for rabies before Stranger Things returns sometime in 2019.

From Slate ● Dec. 10, 2018

Often portrayed in films as elitist dilettantes, they typically come off second best compared with hard-charging military officers or focused intelligence agents.

From Washington Post ● Jul. 20, 2017

Ben thought of Charlie and Jamie less as professional money managers than as dilettantes or, as he put it, “a couple of smart guys just punting around in the markets.”

From "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis

This kind of heroic misinformation provoked some murmuring from English dilettanti who, arriving in Rome armed with nothing but their recollections of Piranesi's engravings, were disappointed by the city.

From Time Magazine Archive

The directors are just so many dilettanti who don't know their job.

From Time Magazine Archive

Some of the finest early lithographs were by French dilettanti whose names have not transpired.

From Time Magazine Archive

Farming is usually a very costly taste for dilettanti.

From Erlach Court by Ossip Schubin

Many dilettanti are presumptuous enough to believe themselves further advanced in theoretical knowledge concerning tone than the most experienced violin maker of the present day.

From George Gem?nder's Progress in Violin Making With Interesting Facts Concerning the Art and Its Critics in General by George Gem?nder