Anodyne
Thursday, September 08, 2005
 
ACT (Aesthetically Claimed Thing): Amateurism

(courtesy answers.com)

"When Mrs. T.W. Atkinson remarked in her 1863 Recollections of the Tartar Steppes and their Inhabitants, 'I am no amateur of these melons,' she used amateur in a sense unfamiliar to us. That sense, 'a lover, an admirer,' is, however, clearly descended from the senses of the word's ultimate Latin source, amātor, 'lover, devoted friend, devotee, enthusiastic pursuer of an objective,' and from its Latin-derived French source, amateur, with a similar range of meanings. First recorded in English in 1784 with the sense in which Mrs. Atkinson used it, amateur is found in 1786 with a meaning more familiar to us, 'a person who engages in an art, for example, as a pastime rather than as a profession,' a sense that had already developed in French."
- posted by cjb @ 9:33 AM


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