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

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

After a hit-and-run accident, three people — a servant, a dilettante and a journalist — find their lives tangled up in the crime’s mysterious origins and aftermath.

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 29, 2022

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

Celebrity activists have long been written off as self-important dilettantes.

From Slate ● Aug. 28, 2019

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

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

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

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 Massenet, Jules

He is very pleasing, and the most dilettante of all the dilettanti I ever met.

From Letters of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy from Italy and Switzerland by Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Felix

Related Words

• connoisseur