What's the difference between amateur and dilettante?

Amateur


Definition:

  • (n.) A person attached to a particular pursuit, study, or science as to music or painting; esp. one who cultivates any study or art, from taste or attachment, without pursuing it professionally.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) A compilation of injuires sustained in an amateur ice hockey program over a tw0-year period revealed that the majority of those injuires were facial lacerations.
  • (2) Now US officials, who have spoken to Reuters on condition of anonymity, say the roundabout way the commission's emails were obtained strongly suggests the intrusion originated in China , possibly by amateurs, and not from India's spy service.
  • (3) The "Be Kind Rewind Protocol", as he calls it, involves setting up small studios with modest sets and facilities – props, back-projection footage, video cameras – so that groups of people can make their own amateur movies together according to anti-auteurist rules drawn up by Gondry.
  • (4) I’ve seen Ukip both at home and abroad, and I’m sorry to say they’re pretty amateur.
  • (5) Tony Abbott has heard the message on the need to change his leadership style, a senior minister has said, warning the prime minister’s detractors against moving an “amateur-hour” spill motion next week.
  • (6) And they should also remember the alternatives to medically assisted dying: botched suicide attempts, death by voluntary starvation and dehydration, pilgrimages to Switzerland and help from one-off amateurs who have the threat of prosecution hanging over them.
  • (7) The movie is sustained by a brilliant amateur cast, chosen by Greengrass from Somali immigrants in Minneapolis .
  • (8) A previously obscure artist has become famous overnight because of the amateur restorer's exploit.
  • (9) On Friday, Hacked Off called for an urgent correction to one of the major sticking points for Fleet Street: the unintended vulnerability of the amateur blogger who, due to "bad government drafting", could have found themselves liable for exemplary damages.
  • (10) They regarded them as amateurs and oiks and refused to extend to them any degree of autonomy.
  • (11) This week's victims, siblings Stuart and Jill, both love amateur dramatics.
  • (12) In a sign of the tension, amateur video footage showed Turkish military personnel refusing to help the riot police, as well as handing out gas masks to demonstrators.
  • (13) In England, they identify the players coming in and if they are professional, they are allowed to play,” Tavecchio said at the summer assembly of Italy’s amateur leagues.
  • (14) Sweden banned professional boxing in 1969 and has also considered banning amateur boxing.
  • (15) The shift in policy was a direct response to weeks of negative media reports surrounding photographers, amateur and professional, who said they were being unfairly stopped, usually under section 44, a law allowing officers to stop and search without need for "suspicion" within designated areas in the UK.
  • (16) He included a link to a YouTube clip of his amateur bout against Charles "Pink Pounder" Jones.
  • (17) Politicians including the prime minister were highly visible during a Games that delivered the best British medal haul for more than a century, but practitioners such as Jon Glenn, head of youth and community at the Amateur Swimming Association, said: "The government needs to start showing by its actions that it values physical activity.
  • (18) The position of the American Medical Association (AMA) has evolved from promoting increased safety and medical reform to recommending total abolition of both amateur and professional boxing.
  • (19) It also aims to draw on the voices of the millions of people who enjoy British artistic life as audiences, amateur participants, volunteers or visitors.
  • (20) Annoyed at the labyrinthine politics of amateur boxing, Fury turned pro just after his 20th birthday.

Dilettante


Definition:

  • (v. t.) An admirer or lover of the fine arts; popularly, an amateur; especially, one who follows an art or a branch of knowledge, desultorily, or for amusement only.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) As if to prove her silly dilettantism, when a journalist asked Dasha about her favourite artists, she replied, "I'm, like, really bad at remembering names."
  • (2) No dilettante side-project of the idle millionaire rock star, this.
  • (3) Those who have worked closely with the foreign secretary in the past say his ego is more fragile than it can appear, and he is sensitive to the accusation of being a political dilettante.
  • (4) In the reality of the early 1960s, he was the wealthy playboy-dilettante secretary of state for war who almost destroyed Harold Macmillan's Conservative government by the discovery of his dalliance with the dancer and call-girl Christine Keeler, who was also said to be sleeping with the Soviet naval attaché Evegeny Ivanov.
  • (5) An open recognition of the problems in the psychoanalytic study of literature should serve to minimize dilettantism and raise the level of scholarship.
  • (6) In 1666, he's angry about the smug dilettantism of the courtly elite, and the appalling arse-licking conformity that even his closest friend indulges in.
  • (7) And Vronsky’s own dilettante-ish attempt to paint Anna is abandoned: a bad and complex omen.
  • (8) Nevertheless it proved Bonaparte a bona fide creative psychoanalyst and not a dilettante propped up by her friendship with Freud.
  • (9) "There's no need to be artsy-fartsy … only dilettantes prefer enigmatic works."
  • (10) Ronson admits it rankles when people assume he got his breaks because of his privileged background or that he is little more than a millionaire dilettante, playing with his electronic synths and Gucci-designed shoes whenever the fancy takes him.
  • (11) Bush isn’t succumbing to Sting-esque world music dilettantism, though, as the seemingly incongruous parts are all held together in service of her unique musical vision.
  • (12) The documentary explores the headlong rush of a brilliant schoolboy with illegible handwriting who enjoyed the dilettante life of Oxford University before illness sparked a lifelong frenzy of discovery about the origins of the universe, which began as a graduate at Cambridge University and has astounded the world.
  • (13) Russell Brand's call on the young not to vote was the pseudo-leftism of a dumb dilettante precisely because politicians can ignore the interests of the young when the young do not threaten them at the polling booths.
  • (14) "[Gandhi] came off as a practiced politician who knew how to get his message across, was precise and articulate and demonstrated a mastery that belied the image some have of [him] as a dilettante," the official said.
  • (15) Her Stakhanovite work rate as a writer and as a working peer made most of us feel like dilettantes.
  • (16) Along the way, there has been the worst kind of ministerial dilettantism and inconsistency.
  • (17) Unlike his TV persona as Jack Donaghy on 30 Rock , the self-described dilettante is an intelligent interviewer with a voice that mesmerises.
  • (18) It's hard to work out if Lebedev worries about whether people see him as a spoilt, rich dilettante.
  • (19) His appointment was not a success, not least with Castle, who regarded him as a dilettante, not really interested in pursuing his policies and proposed legislation.
  • (20) Unlike dilettante-esque me, most of the journalists out in Brazil will be there for the full five weeks.