What is a “professional“? According to the dictionary, it is a person with training and expertise. A safe cracker could fit that description. It is one with academic learning – banksters, Wall Streeters, and college professors could all claim they’re professionals. Conforming to the technical or ethical standards of a profession – that could include doctors and lawyers. Exhibiting a courteous, conscientious and businesslike manner in the work place would include salesmen, secretaries and electricians. Getting paid for what you do – ah now we’re at the heart of it. A professional is one step beyond an amateur, although maybe no better, and possibly worse!

Pimps, prostitutes, coyotes, drug dealers etc. all get paid for what they do also and fit some of the other dictionary definitions as well. Therefore, the term professional must have some qualification, some adjective to describe it in terms of character and integrity, or else it means very little. So when you speak of someone as professional, in order to qualify that description, you may want to apply the term(s) reliable, honorable, truthful, trustworthy, with integrity etc. so that someone can rely upon your description of professional as something meaningful.

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