dilettante
Example Sentences
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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
Two of our esteemed gubernatorial candidates, the cowboy and the dilettante, apparently could not find ties for the first debate Wednesday night, showing up with dress shirts casually unbuttoned.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 23, 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
Growing up, the conductor Maxime Pascal was a self-identified musical dilettante.
From New York Times ● Aug. 16, 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
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
They got labelled as bandwagon-jumping dilettantes, a state of affairs not helped by their manager Tony Secunda’s penchant for headline-grabbing publicity stunts.
From The Guardian ● Nov. 8, 2016
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
Joseph Clemens, the first of these, was himself a composer, after the usual fashion of royal dilettanti, no doubt, but a keen discerner of talent in others.
From Beethoven: A Memoir (2nd Ed.) by Elliott Graeme
Knightly orders continued to be founded, but they were the amusements of dilettanti in honor and ancient custom.
From Women of Mediæval France Woman: in all ages and in all countries Vol. 5 (of 10) by Pierce Butler
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