How to Use dilettante in a Sentence

dilettante

noun

• You can always tell a true expert from a dilettante.
• 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
• Long before that, Scaife had lived the life of a dilettante.
  — Patricia Callahan, ProPublica, 15 Dec. 2021
• 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
• The Big 12 already bears the cross of a big-time football dilettante.
  — Kevin Sherrington, Dallas News, 25 Sep. 2020
• And, of course, the inviolable truth that the dilettante boy king remains in charge, come what may.
  — Andy Meek, BGR, 5 Oct. 2022
• None of them, however, thought him much more than a dilettante.
  — Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker, 3 May 2021
• Most people who use a food bank are not bored, rich dilettantes looking to game the system.
  — Mallory Ortberg, Slate Magazine, 15 Aug. 2017
• In terms of practice and playing, Curry is a golf dilettante.
  — Scott Ostler, SFChronicle.com, 12 July 2018
• This was an amateur move, critics sniffed; the flailing of a dilettante out of his depth.
  — Walter Russell Mead, WSJ, 28 May 2018
• Early on, the media framed Ms. Zhukova as a dilettante.
  — Caitlin Moscatello, New York Times, 3 Mar. 2023
• Any dilettante with money can buy a mixer and auto beat match their way into the dance world.
  — Katie Bain, Billboard, 10 Feb. 2022
• 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
• The result is a story both dilettante and devotee can enjoy.
  — Michael M. Guevara, San Antonio Express-News, 1 Mar. 2018
• The commanding officer of the fort is an inept dilettante played by Ken Berry.
  — Matt Schudel, Washington Post, 9 July 2022
• 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
• The Journal story also implied Polychain’s founder is a dilettante who is in over his head.
  — Jeff John Roberts, Fortune, 11 Dec. 2019
• 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
• 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
• This is not mood music, pretty sounds assembled at a dilettante’s whim.
  — Stephen Hough, New York Times, 2 Mar. 2018
• 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
• 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
• 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
• Critics derided him throughout as a rich dilettante seeking to buy a seat in Congress.
  — Washington Post, 11 Dec. 2021
• Kenner has described the hip-hop star as a naive amateur diplomat — a dilettante, not a criminal.
  — Paul Duggan, Washington Post, 31 Mar. 2023
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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
• 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

Last Updated: 6 Sep 2024