a person who engages in a study, sport, or other activity for pleasure rather than for financial benefit or professional reasons.Compare professional.
an athlete who has never competed for payment or for a monetary prize.
a person inexperienced or unskilled in a particular activity: Hunting lions is not for amateurs.
a person who admires something; devotee; fan: an amateur of the cinema.
adjective
characteristic of or engaged in by an amateur; nonprofessional: an amateur painter; amateur tennis.
Origin of amateur
1775–85; <French, Middle French <Latin amātor lover, equivalent to amā- (stem of amāre to love) + -tor-tor, replaced by French -teur (<Latin -tōr-, oblique stem of -tor); see -eur
In April Christina Massey, a Brooklyn-based artist, created Artists for the USPS, an Instagram-driven group that connected amateur and professional artists in pairs, all as part of a move to help support the service.
Letter-writing staved off lockdown loneliness. Now it’s getting out the vote.|Tanya Basu|September 18, 2020|MIT Technology Review
Obviously, given that these are informal cookbooks full of recipes written by amateur chefs, not everything works.
The Joy of Cooking Other People’s ‘Secret Family Recipes’|Amy McCarthy|September 11, 2020|Eater
Alex Hill, a Brooklyn-based amateur chef, is bringing people together through social media.
Trending News For Our Community|Tanya Christian|August 28, 2020|Essence.com
The technical barriers could prevent millions of amateur investors losing their shirts, which is what happened when the 2017 bubble popped.
Crypto soars again as traders embrace ‘DeFi’ and ‘yield farming’—but some see echoes of the 2017 bubble|Jeff|August 25, 2020|Fortune
These amateurs who think they’re experts don’t stand a chance, but do stand a chance of really getting sucked in.
The Economics of Sports Gambling (Ep. 388 Rebroadcast)|Stephen J. Dubner|August 20, 2020|Freakonomics
Thankfully, the Coleman kids reached a Burger King, and Wahlberg and his amateur biker gang rode off.
Mark Wahlberg’s Pardon Plea: A Look Back At His Troubling, Violent, and Racist Rap Sheet|Marlow Stern|December 7, 2014|DAILY BEAST
Sharp did lots of school plays, which led to a role in amateur operetta, then professional pantomime.
The Brit Who Stormed Broadway|Tim Teeman|December 7, 2014|DAILY BEAST
Today, though, professional and amateur historians can build counter-narratives that are hard to dismantle.
God vs. the Internet. And the Winner is…|Michael Schulson|November 16, 2014|DAILY BEAST
Chicago provides crime reporters and amateur scanner-chasers with more grit and brutality than they can handle combined.