professional
Noun pluralprofessionals
Pluralprofessionals
- 1Carried out for money, especially as one's main way of earning a living.
She became a professional dancer after years of unpaid shows.
He plays professional basketball for a living.
UsageYou turn professional or go professional when you start being paid for something.
- 2Having or showing the skill, quality, or standards of conduct expected of a trained expert; competent, polished, and businesslike.
The report was polished and professional, meeting every standard the firm expected.
His professional conduct impressed the review board.
UsageUnlike the paid sense, this one can take very and more: a very professional report.
Similarcompetent, polished, businesslike, expert, skilled
Oppositeunprofessional, amateurish, sloppy, incompetent
Note
This sense judges, praising work that meets the standard. Classifying uses belong elsewhere: in Robert W. Chambers's The Younger Set (1907), professional men are physicians and lawyers, and professional soldiers today are career troops, as in the paid sense.
- 3A person who belongs to a profession, typically one requiring advanced training and qualification.
The conference brought together professionals from medicine, law, and engineering.
As a professional, she is bound by a strict code of conduct.
Similarpractitioner, specialist, expert
Note
Here what counts is belonging to a qualified calling such as medicine or law. Being paid is not the defining feature. That separates it from the paid practitioner, where earning a living from an activity is enough.
- 4A person who earns their living from a particular activity.
As a professional, she earns her entire income from tennis.
Many professionals on the tour rely on sponsorships to cover travel.
UsageUsually with the field before it: an IT professional, a tennis professional.
Similarpro
Oppositeamateur
Note
Vitali Vitaliev's 2024 piece in RAIL describes his son as a Canada-based IT professional. Here, a professional is someone who earns a living from an activity. A field name such as IT can specify the work, without establishing any formal qualification.
- 5A person who is highly skilled or expert at something.
She negotiated the deal with the cool confidence of a professional.
Watching him repair the watch, you could tell he was a true professional.
UsageOften as praise in a real professional or a true professional.
Similarexpert, pro, master, virtuoso, ace
Oppositeamateur, novice, beginner
Note
Expertise is the core of this sense, and it can attach to a recognized post. In Rex Stout's Fer-de-Lance (1934), a golf club is found to keep a person called a professional, its resident expert. In general use the word is praise for competence rather than a statement about pay, so even an unpaid enthusiast can be called a real professional.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- Rex Stout wrote Fer-de-Lance, first published in 1934. en.wikipedia.org
- The novel describes a person attached to a golf club whose post is called professional. en.wiktionary.org
Less common meanings
- 6A polite, indirect way of referring to a prostitute.
The vice detective said several professionals met their paying clients at that hotel bar.
In the novel, she hints that she is a professional when she tells him what a night with her costs.
Similarprostitute, escort
Note
A euphemism that works by understatement: it names someone only by the fact that they are paid and leaves the rest to the setting. Because the everyday meaning is so strong, this one comes through only when the context makes it unmistakable, as with a flirtation at a bar that turns out to be business. Without such a context, listeners hear the ordinary sense.
- 7In Horowitz's classification, a sociologist chiefly concerned with promoting sociology as a profession.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origin
In Middle English it appeared in spellings such as professhennalle and professhynalle. In modern terms the word is simply profession with the suffix -al added.