Word of the Week (WOW): Dilettante

This post is in response to Heena Rathore P.’s Word of the Week (WOW). This weekly meme is a great way of improving your vocabulary.  If you wish to participate, simply create a post with your word and leave a link in a comment on Heena’s WOW post.

Here’s my WOW for this week:

Word
dilettante

Plural
dilettantes or dilettanti

Part of Speech
both noun and adjective

Pronunciation
dil-et-tante (dĭl′ĭ-tänt′)

Meaning 

noun – someone who dabbles in an art or field of knowledge

adjective – amateurish, superficial

Synonyms

noun – amateur, aesthete, dabbler, nonprofessional, sciolist, smatterer, trifler, uninitiate

adjective – amateurish, dilettanteish, dilettantish, nonprofessional, sciolist, unprofessional, unskilled, unskillfull

Antonyms

noun – expert, master, pro, professional, specialist

adjective – able, capable, competent, good, skillful

Word Origin

C18th Italian lover of the arts, from present participle of dilettare, to delight, from Latin dēlectāre

Use in a sentence

noun – Whilst he professed to be a master of the subject, in truth he was a dilettante, merely skimming the surface in order to spout superficial inanities.

adjective – It was a dilettante effort, completely unprofessional in brushstroke and content, and would never be accepted at the academy.

 

If you want to discover more great words then visit Heena’s page Word Treasure.