Word.ws English Dictionary

dilettantism

dilettantism noun: the act of behaving like a dilettante, of being an amateur or dabbler, sometimes in the arts.

Noun

dilettantism (countable and uncountable, plural dilettantisms)

  1. The act of behaving like a dilettante, of being an amateur or dabbler, sometimes in the arts.
    • Near-synonyms: dabbling, ultracrepidarianism, amateurism
    • The brawny craftsman finds it no child's play to mould his unpliant rugged masses; neither is guidance of men a dilettantism: what it becomes when treated as a dilettantism, we may see!1839 (indicated as 1840), Thomas Carlyle, “Laissez-Faire”, in Chartism, London: James Fraser, […], →OCLC, pages 52–53
    1. The act of enjoying the arts, being a connoisseur.

Forms of dilettantism

pluraldilettantisms

Origin of dilettantism

From dilettante + -ism.

Questions about dilettantism

What does dilettantism mean?
Dilettantism means the act of behaving like a dilettante, of being an amateur or dabbler, sometimes in the arts.
What part of speech is dilettantism?
Dilettantism is a noun.
What is the plural of dilettantism?
The plural of dilettantism is dilettantisms.

Words near dilettantism in the dictionary

  1. dilettantes
  2. dilettanteship
  3. dilettanti
  4. dilettantish
  5. dilettantishly
  6. dilettantism
  7. dilettantisms
  8. dilettantist
  9. dilettantists
  10. dilettantly
  11. dilettants

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dilettantism (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “dilettantism.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dilettantism. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.