ENTHUSIAST

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does enthusiast mean? 

• ENTHUSIAST (noun)
  The noun ENTHUSIAST has 2 senses:

1. an ardent and enthusiastic supporter of some person or activity

2. a person having a strong liking for something

  Familiarity information: ENTHUSIAST used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• ENTHUSIAST (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

An ardent and enthusiastic supporter of some person or activity

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

enthusiast; partisan; partizan

Hypernyms ("enthusiast" is a kind of...):

admirer; booster; champion; friend; protagonist; supporter (a person who backs a politician or a team etc.)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "enthusiast"):

addict; freak; junkie; junky; nut (someone who is so ardently devoted to something that it resembles an addiction)

backslapper (someone who demonstrates enthusiastic or excessive cordiality)

balletomane (a ballet enthusiast)

fanatic; fiend (a person motivated by irrational enthusiasm (as for a cause))

gadgeteer (a person who delights in designing or building or using gadgets)

shutterbug (a photography enthusiast)

fan; rooter; sports fan (an enthusiastic devotee of sports)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A person having a strong liking for something

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Synonyms:

enthusiast; fancier

Hypernyms ("enthusiast" is a kind of...):

admirer; adorer (someone who admires a young woman)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "enthusiast"):

animal fancier (a person who breeds animals)

bird fancier (a person with a strong interest in birds)

maniac (a person who has an obsession with or excessive enthusiasm for something)

technophile (a person who is enthusiastic about new technology)

 Context examples 

Astronomy enthusiasts and scientists alike were excitedly hoping to find out more about this unprecedented dimming.

(ESO Telescope Sees Surface of Dim Betelgeuse, ESO)

He would gain cheerfulness, and she would learn to be an enthusiast for Scott and Lord Byron; nay, that was probably learnt already; of course they had fallen in love over poetry.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

Other models failing her for a time, she undertook to cast her own pretty foot, and the family were one day alarmed by an unearthly bumping and screaming and running to the rescue, found the young enthusiast hopping wildly about the shed with her foot held fast in a pan full of plaster, which had hardened with unexpected rapidity.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

Many astronomy enthusiasts wondered if Betelgeuse’s dimming meant it was about to explode.

(ESO Telescope Sees Surface of Dim Betelgeuse, ESO)