professional

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   engaged in a profession or engaging in as a profession or means of livelihood

   The professional trader possesses distinctive qualifications.

2. 2
   adj

   characteristic of or befitting a profession or one engaged in a profession

   professional conduct

3. 3
   adj

   engaged in by members of a profession

   professional occupations include medicine and the law and teaching

4. 4
   adj

   of or relating to a profession

   we need professional advice

5. 5
   adj

   of or relating to or suitable as a profession

   professional organizations

6. 6
   noun

   A person who earns their living from a specified activity.

   My son, a Canada-based IT professional who often travels to Ukraine, told me about the exhilarating atmosphere on those Ukraine-bound trains, bringing home hundreds of the unwilling refugees, mostly women and children (including the babies, born in exile on the way to meet their Ukrainian fighter fathers for the first time). The difference between Ukrainian refugees and other reluctant exiles is that Ukrainians are desperate to return.

7. 7
   noun

   A prostitute.

   There was this nice lady who flirted with me at the bar, but it turned out that she was a professional.

8. 8
   noun

   An expert.

   I have learned that there is a person attached to a golf club called a professional. Find out who fills that post at the Green Meadow Club; […] invite the professional, urgently, to dine with us this evening.

Etymology

From Middle English professhennalle, professhynalle; equivalent to profession + -al.