aficionado
noun
Did you know?
Before there were nerds, geeks, stans, fanboys, or fangirls, there were aficionados. But not long before, relatively speaking. English borrowed aficionado in the early 1800s directly from Spanish, making a noun out of the past participle of the Spanish verb aficionar, which means "to inspire affection." Nerd, geek, and the rest can sometimes imply that the devotee in question is overdoing their ardor, but aficionado (which traces further back to the same Latin ancestor that gave us the English word affection) is a more neutral descriptor for someone with an abiding and thoughtful devotion to an interest or activity.
Synonyms
Examples of aficionado in a Sentence
Harvey Steiman, Wine Spectator, 30 June 2008
The quality varies with the individual authors, but both history buffs and aficionados of literary criticism will find food for thought here.
—Publishers Weekly, 8 Jan. 2001
When film aficionados speak of film noir, they usually refer to the look and attitude of certain films. As critics have found, such films do not form a genre; at best, they suggest a movement.
—Bonnie Smothers, Booklist, 15 Nov. 1999
Beyond scuba diving, North Carolina's Crystal Coast and Cape Lookout are famous for fishing. Although I'm not an aficionado myself, prospective anglers need only walk the docks of Moorehead City to book inshore or Gulf Stream excursions …
—James Sturz, New York Times, 26 Apr. 1998
an aficionado of the sci-fi series who has seen all the movies several times
John Wisely, Detroit Free Press, 4 Nov. 2024
But make no mistake: this film’s director, S. Craig Zahler, has quite the following, and Bone Tomahawk has slowly but surely become a cult classic that many horror aficionados watch during the Halloween season.
—Travis Bean, Forbes, 26 Oct. 2024
Her daughter, Isha Ambani Piramal, being an art aficionado herself, quickly joined hands with her mother in the venture and took the lead for the gallery.
—Shreejaya Nair, ARTnews.com, 16 Oct. 2024
Space aficionados often compare the drive to explore other worlds to the impulse that sent humans on voyages around the world, depicting our forebears’ curiosity about our own planet as an innate imperative curiosity that defines us as an alpha species.
—Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 16 Oct. 2024
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Cite this Entry
“Aficionado.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/aficionado. Accessed 28 Nov. 2024.
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aficionado
noun
Spanish, derived from Latin affectio "affection"
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