Originally posted by Einion
The most basic definition of professional is doing a task for money, any task.
If you cut grass, play video games, make coffee, boink, pump gas, paint, write or talk dirty on the phone and you get paid for it you\'re a professional (versus us amateurs who can do all of the same things - not at the same time one hopes - but don\'t get paid for it). The definition chain in any good dictionary will support this. In the OED it goes like this: profession > occupation > employment, which = payment for services.
Einion
I disagree, since apparently I\'m a professional driver since a friend gave me a couple of bucks for taking them somewhere. Not.
I got my definition from Wikipedia (which we all know is the font of all knowledge
), and it states:
(most pertinent parts copied and pasted):
\"A professional is a worker required to possess a large body of knowledge derived from extensive academic study (usually tertiary), with the training almost always formalized.
Professionals are at least to a degree self-regulating, in that they control the training and evaluation processes that admit new persons to the field, and in judging whether the work done by their members is up to standard. This differs from other kinds of work where regulation (if considered necessary) is imposed by the state, or where official quality standards are often lacking. Professions have some historical links to guilds in these regards.
Professionals usually have autonomy in the workplace—they are expected to utilize their independent judgement and professional ethics in carrying out their responsibilities. This holds true even if they are employees instead of working on their own. Typically a professional provides a service (in exchange for payment or salary), in accordance with established protocols for licensing, ethics, procedures, standards of service and training / certification.
The above definitions were echoed by economist and sociologist Max Weber, who noted that professions are defined by the power to exclude and control admission to the profession, as well as by the development of a particular vocabulary specific to the occupation, and at least somewhat incomprehensible to outsiders.
In sports, a professional is someone who participates for money. The opposite is amateur, meaning a person that does not play for money, but in an academic (e.g. college football) or other private setting. The term \"professional\" is commonly used incorrectly, as the distinction simply refers to how the athlete is funded, and not necessarily to what competitions he engages in or what results he achieves.\"
