How to Use dilettante in a Sentence
dilettante
noun- You can always tell a true expert from a dilettante.
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But in croquet, age is no barrier to mastery, and Grimsley’s guests, who had flown in from around the country, were no dilettantes.
—Tara Bahrampour, Washington Post, 10 May 2023
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Long before that, Scaife had lived the life of a dilettante.
—Patricia Callahan, ProPublica, 15 Dec. 2021
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From my point of view — that of a dilettante — this is a bad PR move and not a lot more.
—Elizabeth Lopatto, The Verge, 14 Dec. 2018
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The Big 12 already bears the cross of a big-time football dilettante.
—Kevin Sherrington, Dallas News, 25 Sep. 2020
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And, of course, the inviolable truth that the dilettante boy king remains in charge, come what may.
—Andy Meek, BGR, 5 Oct. 2022
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None of them, however, thought him much more than a dilettante.
—Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, 3 May 2021
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Most people who use a food bank are not bored, rich dilettantes looking to game the system.
—Mallory Ortberg, Slate Magazine, 15 Aug. 2017
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In terms of practice and playing, Curry is a golf dilettante.
—Scott Ostler, SFChronicle.com, 12 July 2018
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This was an amateur move, critics sniffed; the flailing of a dilettante out of his depth.
—Walter Russell Mead, WSJ, 28 May 2018
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Early on, the media framed Ms. Zhukova as a dilettante.
—Caitlin Moscatello, New York Times, 3 Mar. 2023
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Any dilettante with money can buy a mixer and auto beat match their way into the dance world.
—Katie Bain, Billboard, 10 Feb. 2022
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There are many ways of seeing landscape quite as good; and none more vivid, in spite of canting dilettantes, than from a railway train.
—Clara Gari, Smithsonian, 24 June 2017
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The result is a story both dilettante and devotee can enjoy.
—Michael M. Guevara, San Antonio Express-News, 1 Mar. 2018
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The commanding officer of the fort is an inept dilettante played by Ken Berry.
—Matt Schudel, Washington Post, 9 July 2022
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Moore is the real power in this power couple and doesn’t need her husband, who is less of an auteur and more of a dilettante, to get her roles.
—Kerry Lengel, azcentral, 15 Aug. 2019
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The Journal story also implied Polychain’s founder is a dilettante who is in over his head.
—Jeff John Roberts, Fortune, 11 Dec. 2019
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Cecile Monteyne draws on the screwball comedies of the past to bring out the laughs as Julia Budder, the party's hostess and dilettante producer of the new show.
—NOLA.com, 12 June 2017
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Durant is not looking to become a dilettante team owner — in it for the profit, or the celebrity status, or as a power trip.
—Scott Ostler, San Francisco Chronicle, 28 Jan. 2018
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This is not mood music, pretty sounds assembled at a dilettante’s whim.
—Stephen Hough, New York Times, 2 Mar. 2018
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Growing up a dilettante with a taste for action, he was drawn more to outdoor adventures than his studies.
—David James, Anchorage Daily News, 26 Mar. 2023
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Using his fortune for exploration was not the whim of a dilettante but the result of a drive to comprehend the world in its complexity.
—Edward Rothstein, WSJ, 11 Dec. 2020
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And both are rear-drive, because all-wheel drive is for those timid dilettantes who buy Lamborghinis and Audis.
—John Pearley Huffman, Car and Driver, 29 Apr. 2020
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Critics derided him throughout as a rich dilettante seeking to buy a seat in Congress.
—Washington Post, 11 Dec. 2021
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Kenner has described the hip-hop star as a naive amateur diplomat — a dilettante, not a criminal.
—Paul Duggan, Washington Post, 31 Mar. 2023
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The Lyriq’s price signals a repositioning of the Cadillac brand in the emergent EV space—from legacy dilettante to hard-nosed, style-forward competitor.
—Dan Neil, WSJ, 1 Dec. 2022
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None of these dilettante candidates has held public office, and none of them is willing to start at the beginning in local politics.
—Nicholas Goldberg, Star Tribune, 9 July 2021
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The Nero meme leaves the impression of an effete dilettante, confident in his own genius only because nobody had the guts to tell him otherwise.
—Gaia Squarci, Smithsonian Magazine, 18 Sep. 2020
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Ranked-choice voting is the crack cocaine of political dilettantes — very addictive, but only the pushers get high.
—David Lebedoff, Twin Cities, 30 Mar. 2017
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Witchcraft, real or imagined, has become a somewhat trendy tack among writers turning over the legacies of patriarchy, but Blakemore is no dilettante here.
—Los Angeles Times, 23 Aug. 2021
Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'dilettante.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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