dilettante

Gone are the days of the critic playing dilettante, having intellectual conversations over martinis and cigarettes at the month’s salon for like-minded individuals.

From Salon ● Nov. 5, 2026

Titus hands power to Saturninus, the eldest son of the late Roman emperor, played with a comic spin as a peevish dilettante by Matthew Amendt.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 1, 2026

And he has often been underestimated, such as when he won a majority government in 2015 at the age of 44, despite being portrayed by his political opponents as something of a dilettante.

From BBC ● Dec. 21, 2024

But he is also a deeply polarizing character, mocked by some critics as a dilettante or sound bite philosopher.

From New York Times ● Feb. 28, 2023

Nevertheless, several accomplished alpinists not on her team regarded Pittman as a grandstanding dilettante.

From "Into Thin Air" by Jon Krakauer

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

Today, however, people engaged in the serious craft of politics are understandably uninterested in the work of dilettantes who dabble at politics to the detriment of their vocation.

From Washington Post ● Sep. 7, 2022

If anyone’s tempted to suggest that the place is filled with rich dilettantes, he noted that 36 percent of the people in this year’s entering class are eligible to receive Pell Grants for lower-income students.

From New York Times ● Aug. 20, 2022

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

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

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

From Time Magazine Archive

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

From Time Magazine Archive

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

On page 331, "dillettanti" was replaced with "dilettanti."

From An Introduction to the History of Japan by Katsuro Hara

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