dilettante

American  

[dil-i-tahnt, dil-i-tahnt, -tahn-tey, -tan-tee] / ˈdɪl ɪˌtɑnt, ˌdɪl ɪˈtɑnt, -ˈtɑn teɪ, -ˈtæn ti /

noun

• dilettantes,
  plural
• dilettanti
  plural

1. a person who takes up an art, activity, or subject merely for amusement, especially in a desultory or superficial way; dabbler.

   Synonyms:

   amateur

2. a lover of an art or science, especially of a fine art.

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adjective

1. of or relating to dilettantes.

dilettante British  

/ ˌdɪlɪˈtɑːntɪ /

noun

1. a person whose interest in a subject is superficial rather than professional

2. a person who loves the arts

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adjective

1. of or characteristic of a dilettante

dilettante Cultural  

1. Someone who is interested in the fine arts as a spectator, not as a serious practitioner. Dilettante is most often used to mean a dabbler, someone with a broad but shallow attachment to any field.

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• dilettantism
  noun
• dilettanteish
  adjective
• dilettantish
  adjective

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• dilettantes
  plural
• dilettanti
  plural

Etymology

Origin of dilettante

1725–35; < Italian, noun use of present participle of dilettare < Latin dēlectāre to delight

Explanation

Though dilettante might sound like a nice French word, don't use it on your friend who thinks he can play the guitar after several short lessons. A dilettante is an amateur, often one who pretends to be very knowledgeable. The meaning of dilettante has changed since it was borrowed from the Italian in the mid 1700s. Originally, it meant "lover of the arts," but began to take on a negative slant as the idea of doing something as a professional took hold strongly during the 18th century. A dilettante was a mere lover of art as opposed to one who did it professionally. Today, the word implies you're pretending to be more of an artist than you're interested in or capable of being, so if you call your friend who likes to paint a dilettante, it's like you're calling him or her a poser.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

dilettante dilettantes dilettanti

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

"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

Crystal does fine in this environment; he doesn’t come off as a tourist or a dilettante.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 24, 2024

Growing up, the conductor Maxime Pascal was a self-identified musical dilettante.

From New York Times ● Aug. 16, 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

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

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

From Time Magazine Archive

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

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

There are, however, dilettanti violin makers whose self-conceit and boldness is simply astonishing.

From George Gem?nder's Progress in Violin Making With Interesting Facts Concerning the Art and Its Critics in General by George Gem?nder

All the composers whose works he conducts justly load him down with thanks and felicitations, and his talent and indefatigable power are acclaimed constantly by all the dilettanti of Monte Carlo.

From My Recollections by Jules Massenet

Related Words

• connoisseur