smatterer

Walpole described “Mr. Fenn of East Dereham in Norfolk” as “a smatterer in antiquity, but a very good sort of man.”

He goes on to say: "I advise you to be no Smatterer, but a thorough-pac'd Wrestler, Perfect and Quick, in breaking and taking all Holds; otherwise whene'er you break a Hold, if you don't proceed sharply to give your Adversary a Fall, according to the several following Paragraphs, you're not better than one engag'd at Sharps, who only parries his Adversary, but does not pursue him with a binding and home Thrust."

The Minister, whom he met only over the table, had all the civility towards him which can be united with a face full of persiflage, and with a class of society in whose eyes all the world is divided into spies and thieves; but Sebastian perceived, nevertheless, that he looked upon him as a smatterer in medicine and the serious sciences,–as if they were not all serious,–and as an adept merely in wit and in the liberal arts.

Coke commented upon them sentence by sentence, and even now the merest smatterer in English law must profess some knowledge of Quia emptores and De donis conditionalibus.

They sent everybody to school, and, though their educations were principally those of smatterers, it is an advantage to be even a smatterer among the very ignorant.