Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun One who dabbles or plays in water, or as in water.
  • noun One who dabbles in or dips slightly into some pursuit, business, or study; a superficial worker or thinker.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun One who dabbles.
  • noun One who dips slightly into anything; a superficial meddler.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun one who dabbles

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun an amateur who engages in an activity without serious intentions and who pretends to have knowledge
  • noun any of numerous shallow-water ducks that feed by upending and dabbling

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

from dabble + -er

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Examples

  • She suggests that the growth offered by buy-to-let property has resulted in "dabbler" landlords who, facing an economic downturn, are harassing tenants and seem unaware that evicting renters without notice can be acrime.

    Is the recession fuelling a rise in unlawful evictions? 2010

  • I'm just 'dabbler' in the soap world, but I love seeing you link and talk about all the wonderful products.

    Using 3-D Molds - Unmolding Anne-Marie 2007

  • Although Ms. Amato, 28, was a "dabbler" cook, her husband's idea of a fine meal was a fried bologna sandwich, she says.

    Cutting Costs at Culinary School Dawn Fallik 2009

  • The knowledgeable Columbia University alum and erstwhile "dabbler" estimated that about 30

    Yahoo! News: Business - Opinion 2010

  • Suffice it to say that CBS needs to get going with the premium media delivery if wants to transition from "dabbler" status to something with a vested interest in tapping the social media space to full (est) effect.

    Original Signal - Transmitting Web 2.0 2008

  • There's the jazz student, the angry punk, the rock purist, the classical dabbler, the pop traditionalist, and the roots traveller.

    Shawn Amos: PLAY > SKIP: New Music for Nov. 2 Shawn Amos 2010

  • James Franco, actor and dabbler extraordinaire, will appear with "My Own Private River," a fan's tribute to actor River Phoenix that repurposes footage shot for and during Gus Van Sant's 1991 film "My Own Private Idaho."

    A Wide World of Voices Steve Dollar 2012

  • As I evolved as a writer, from navel-high producer of galactic space operas to fuzz-sprouting fantasist imagining nonexistent island countries, to university dabbler in more-or-less realistic short stories to twentysomething unpublished novelist, I became more and more interested in the interactive nature of fiction.

    Mohsin Hamid on writing The Reluctant Fundamentalist 2011

  • Weatherbee was a clerk who had known naught but clerking all his life; Cuthfert was a master of arts, a dabbler in oils, and had written not a little.

    In a Far Country 2010

  • There's the jazz student, the angry punk, the rock purist, the classical dabbler, the pop traditionalist, and the roots traveller.

    Shawn Amos: PLAY > SKIP: New Music for Nov. 2 Shawn Amos 2010

Comments

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  • basically a big fat wanna-be

    January 15, 2009