[crispinb]

It's an unfortunate loss for our conceptual heritage for the word 'professional' to have been mostly hijacked to mean something more like 'obedient', 'conformist', 'dull', 'bland', 'besuited' etc.

Once you don't have a word to express a concept, that concept can quite quickly fall out of circulation. Professionalism was a useful part of modern culture: it would be a shame for it to disappear from the lexicon. A horse that's bolted, I fear.