Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun See dilelttantism.

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

  • noun The state or quality of being a dilettante; the desultory pursuit of art, science, or literature.

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

  • noun The condition of being a dilettante; the desultory pursuit of art, science, or literature.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

dilettante +‎ -ism

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Examples

  • Petrarch, even more truly than with the kindly Boccaccio, that the purely literary life, and that dilettanteism, which is the twin sister of scepticism, began.

    Among My Books Second Series James Russell Lowell 1855

  • I suppose your Slav and your Anglo-Saxon have no prejudices, and that they share their Venetian with a dilettanteism quite modern.

    The French Immortals Series — Complete Various

  • Since Woodbury does not think abstinence to be the cure of intemperance, could he not justify his practice by a higher principle than self-indulgence, lay it on a deeper foundation than dilettanteism?

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 Various

  • But the more ravishing the beauty which seemed offered through perfect realization of this knowledge, the more blighting would be its effects, if entertained in the spirit of a selfish dilettanteism.

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 71, September, 1863 Various

  • This is strong language, but it is time, and more than time, that sickly dilettanteism should be left behind, and this gross libel on the

    The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election Robert Wallace

  • But it requires a mind entirely free to give one's self up to the charm of historical dilettanteism which cities built upon the past conjure up, and although Julien prided himself, not without reason, on being above emotion, he was not possessed of his usual independence of mind during the walk which took him to his "human mosaic," as he picturesquely expressed it, and he pondered and repondered the following questions:

    The French Immortals Series — Complete Various

  • When the cup of human life is so overflowing with woe and pain and misery, it seems to me a narrow dilettanteism or downright charlatanism to devote one's self to petty or bizarre problems which can have no relation to human happiness, and to prate of self-satisfaction and self-expression.

    Woman Her Sex and Love Life William J. Robinson

  • But he was inspired by the enthusiasm of a man who feels with extreme ardor, and when he was met by the partly ironical dilettanteism of Dorsenne he was almost pained by it, so much the more so as the author and he had some common theories, notably an extreme fancy for heredity and race.

    The French Immortals Series — Complete Various

  • It is easy to accuse books, and bad ones are easily found, and the best are but records, and not the things recorded; and certainly there is dilettanteism enough, and books that are merely neutral and do nothing for us.

    The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 03, January, 1858 Various

  • His family, the Barwoods, had been from the earliest times a race of shrewd and driving New England storekeepers, the very antipodes of sentiment and dilettanteism.

    Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 Various

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