hobby
Pluralhobbies
- 1An activity that someone enjoys doing in their spare time.
Photography started as a casual hobby and grew into a serious pursuit.
Many retirees take up new hobbies to fill their days with purpose.
Similarpastime, pursuit, interest, diversion, recreation
Oppositejob, profession
Note
The pastime word is a clipped hobby-horse. Behind that stands Middle English hoby, "small horse, pony," traced through Old French to Old Dutch hobben, "to toss, move up and down." The same root carries the Irish horse breed and the pet-topic meaning. In everyday use it pairs naturally with take up and give up, and its plural is hobbies.
- 2Any of four small falcon species in the genus Falco, especially Falco subbuteo.
A hobby can snatch swifts and swallows in midair thanks to its remarkable speed.
Hobbies migrate south to Africa to spend the winter.
Note
A different word that happens to share the spelling. The falcon's name comes through Old French hobé from Medieval Latin hopētus, a diminutive of harpe, and has nothing to do with horses. It belongs to the world of hawking: in Thomas Penn's Winter King (2011), Richard Fox sends Henry a hobby, and the king receives it enthusiastically. The plural is hobbies, the same as for the pastime.
- 3A favorite topic or pet subject that a person repeatedly returns to in conversation.
Constitutional reform was his hobby, a theme he wove into every dinner conversation.
She rode her usual hobby again, lecturing the whole table on medieval coinage.
Similarhobbyhorse, obsession, fixation, preoccupation
Note
A favorite subject is something a person rides. The image survives in Thomas Hughes's Tom Brown's School Days (1857), where East says of his friend that "he's on one of his…", mounted, so to speak, on his pet theme. Because hobby on its own is easily read as the spare-time pastime, the fuller hobby horse is the clearer choice when you mean a topic someone keeps returning to.
- 4A horse breed of the British Isles, known also as the Irish Hobby, that has since died out.
The medieval hobby carried light cavalry across Irish terrain with remarkable speed.
Breeders crossed hobbies with other stock, and the original breed eventually died out.
Note
Here the word stays closest to its roots in Middle English hoby, "small horse, pony." The full breed name, Irish Hobby, is capitalized. Because the breed is extinct, the word now belongs mostly to equestrian history. In older writing about horses, a hobby is usually an animal, not a pastime.
Practice
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Origins
Shortened from hobby-horse, which came from Middle English hoby, hobin ("small horse, pony"), from Old French, of Germanic origin, ultimately from a Proto-Germanic root meaning "to hop." The meaning shifted from "small horse" to "child's toy riding horse" to "favorite pastime," the connecting idea being an activity that doesn't go anywhere. It possibly began as a name for a horse, a pet form of Robert or Robin.
From Middle English hoby, hobeye, from Old French hobé, hobet, from Medieval Latin hopētus, a diminutive of harpe.