Vocabulary word of the week.

Amateur

Origin: It is a French word from the Latin amateur, which means lover, and amare, which means to love.

Part of speech: It is both a noun and adjective.

History of the word: according to www.answers.com/topic/amateur the history of the word amateur is “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. Given the limitations of doing something as an amateur, it is not surprising that the word is soon after recorded in the disparaging sense we still use to refer to someone who lacks professional skill or ease in performance.”

Definition: There are six definitions of the word. Three of them are nouns and three of them are adjectives.

Nouns

1. Someone for whom the study of art, science or athletics is a pastime and not a profession

2. An athlete who never accepts money for participating in a competition.

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3. Someone who lack skill as a professional.

Adjective

1. Something that is performed by an amateur.

2. Made up by amateurs.

3. Something that is not professional or is unskilled.

I like the idea that the word amateur comes from the word to love. This I feel is truly what the Olympics is about, these athletes compete for the love of they sport and not fro any monetary gain.