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

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

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

Him and all the other dilettantes who don’t know the wonders of VistaVision.

From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 5, 2025

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

In a backslapping musical world of insipid dilettantes, Mark and his music stand for absolute conviction, absolute meaning and the absolute refusal to compromise your vision.

From The Guardian ● Feb. 26, 2019

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

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

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

Davide," wrote a French critic, M. Bertin, from Venice, in 1823, "excites among the dilettanti of this town an enthusiasm and delight which could scarcely be conceived without having been witnessed.

From The Great Musicians: Rossini and His School by Henry Sutherland Edwards

Think of that ye dilettanti who are so proud of your pictures and marbles!

From Violins and Violin Makers Biographical Dictionary of the Great Italian Artistes, their Followers and Imitators, to the present time. With Essays on Important Subjects Connected with the Violin. by J. H. (Joseph Henry) Pearce