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amateur
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
amateur
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a professional/amateur actor
▪ It isn’t easy to become a successful professional actor.
amateur/professional golf
▪ The standard of women's amateur golf is certainly improving.
an enthusiastic amateur (=someone with a fairly low level of skill who tries hard)
▪ There are a few professionals in the race, but most are enthusiastic amateurs.
rank amateurs (=not at all good or professional)
▪ They make us look like rank amateurs.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Compared to those guys, I'm an amateur.
▪ The cast was made up mostly of amateurs.
▪ The orchestra is made up entirely of amateurs.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Expectations for Verplank soared after that tour victory in 1985, the first by an amateur since Gene Littler in 1954.
▪ From 175 out of 450 county cricketers in 1949 the number of amateurs fell to 72 out of 370 in 1961.
▪ It is obvious that it thought the enlightened amateur, like Hope himself, was the ideal judge.
▪ Jack Lemmon, his longtime amateur partner, will be absent after 23 consecutive unsuccessful attempts to make the pro-am cut.
▪ John Enright of the Olympic Club is one of the amateurs.
▪ The first time, in 1962, Daley ran a political amateur for sheriff and Ogilvie beat him.
▪ They are a magnet for tourists, experienced boaters and amateurs alike.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Amateur

Amateur \Am`a*teur"\, n. [F., fr. L. amator lover, fr. amare to love.] 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.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
amateur

1784, "one who has a taste for (something)," from French amateur "lover of," from Latin amatorem (nominative amator) "lover," agent noun from amatus, past participle of amare "to love" (see Amy). Meaning "dabbler" (as opposed to professional) is from 1786. As an adjective, by 1838.

Wiktionary
amateur

a. 1 Non-professional. 2 Created, done, or populated by amateurs or non-professionals. 3 Showing a lack of professionalism, experience or talent. n. 1 (context now rare English) A lover (term: of) something. 2 A person attached to a particular pursuit, study, or science as to music or painting; especially one who cultivates any study or art, from taste or attachment, without pursuing it professionally. 3 Someone who is unqualified or insufficiently skillful.

WordNet
amateur
  1. adj. engaged in as a pastime; "an amateur painter"; "gained valuable experience in amateur theatricals"; "recreational golfers"; "reading matter that is both recreational and mentally stimulating"; "unpaid extras in the documentary" [syn: recreational, unpaid]

  2. lacking professional skill or expertise; "a very amateurish job"; "inexpert but conscientious efforts"; "an unskilled painting" [syn: amateurish, inexpert, unskilled]

amateur
  1. n. someone who pursues a study or sport as a pastime

  2. does not play for pay [ant: professional]

Wikipedia
Amateur

An amateur ( French amateur "lover of", from Old French and ultimately from Latin amatorem nom. amator, "lover") is generally considered a person attached to a particular pursuit, study, or science in a non- professional or unpaid manner.

Amateur (film)

Amateur is a 1994 film written and directed by Hal Hartley starring Isabelle Huppert, Martin Donovan and Elina Löwensohn.

Usage examples of "amateur".

It matters not whether he is professional or amateur, so he is untouched by academicism and has not done so much reading or writing as to impair his mental digestion and his clarity of vision.

BY this time, the English Ambassage Extraordinary, three hundred strong, with its aching diplomacy and its groaning digestions, with its cliques, its amateurs, its professionals and with the Earl and Countess of Lennox, was already at Orleans, not much more than two hundred miles away.

If anyone happened upon her, Amy explained that she was preparing amateur theatricals.

They were the local chapter of Amateur Ladies Avifauna Ornithologists.

Ask anyone in the Amateur Ladies Avifauna Ornithologists or the Harmony Garden Club.

The belemnite, it turned out, had been discovered four years earlier by an amateur naturalist named Chaning Pearce, and the discovery had been fully reported at a meeting of the Geological Society.

Captain Breakstone longed to go to sea, and his dream was to command a transport-he was an amateur boat enthusiast, and he had navigated a destroyer briefly in World War I-but he was trapped by his excellent civilian record as a lawyer.

At first, he had thought that these people were SOE bunglers, rank amateurs.

She would tell them of her childhood when her family had all enjoyed amateur theatricals and how Lord Bute, who had been almost like a father to them for she had never known her own, having been born after his death had been so clever at stage-managing and acting, in fact everything concerned with the theatre.

We watched Sam walk off towards the weighing room and Tremayne remarked thoughtfully that he might try Cashless in an amateur race, and see what Nolan could do.

For the moment, it is enough to know that the changes were made, and that they were made widely, especially in the first two hundred years in which the texts were being copied, when most of the copyists were amateurs.

I began this book, I, like other well-informed amateurs, knew about all that had been published on the history of cryptology in books on the subject.

As I have never seen it in print, or heard it related by any one since, you shall have it instanter: It is well known that our present laughter-loving monarch was, in earlier years, often surrounded, when in private, by a coruscation of wit and talent, which included not only the most distinguished persons in the state, but also some celebrated bon vivants and amateur vocalists, among whom the names of the Duke of Orleans, Earl of Derby, Charles James Fox, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the facetious poet laureat to the celebrated Beefsteak club, Tom Hewardine, Sir John Moore, Mr Brownlow, Captain Thompson, Bate Dudley, Captain Morris, and Colonel George Hanger, formed the most conspicuous characters at the princely anacreontic board.

The halls of the theatres are capital places for amateurs to exercise their talents in intriguing, and I had profited tolerably well by the lessons I had learnt in this fine school.

Though the girl was only fourteen, she had all the indications of the marriageable age, and yet none of the Provencal amateurs had succeeded in making her see daylight.