HOBBY • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Hobby

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/hˈɑbi/ Listen

noun

Hobby n. (pl. hobbies) (Zool.) A small, strong-winged European falcon (Falco subbuteo), formerly trained for hawking.

Hobbyhorse, Hobby n.

A strong, active horse, of a middle size, said to have been originally from Ireland; an ambling nag.

A stick, often with the head or figure of a horse, on which boys make believe to ride. (Usually under the form hobbyhorse)

A subject or plan upon which one is constantly setting off; a favorite and ever-recurring theme of discourse, thought, or effort; that which occupies one's attention unduly, or to the weariness of others; a ruling passion. (Usually under the form hobby) "Not one of them has any hobbyhorse, to use the phrase of Sterne."

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Etymology of 'Hobby'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Hobby" Quotes from Famous Books

... (1) At the at-home aforesaid. (2) At Macmurdo's house in Fitzroy Street in the days of the Century Guild and its paper 'The Hobby Horse.' (3) At a meeting somewhere in Westminster at which I delivered an address on Socialism, and at which Oscar turned up and spoke. Robert Ross surprised me greatly by telling me, long after Oscar's death, that it was this address of mine that moved Oscar ...

— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... the nursery for a last look. The crib is gone, and the doll babies and the blockhouses, but the echoes have not yet stopped galloping; May's laugh, and Edith's glee, and Frank's shout, as he urged the hobby-horse to its utmost speed, both heels struck into the flanks, till out of his glass eye the horse seemed ...

— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage

... rank—the son of a gentleman who bore arms, and his father's father before him. He dined at twelve, he supped at six, he said his prayers, and blessed himself when no strangers were by. He was something of a herbalist, as a sheer hobby of his own; he went to feed his falcons in the morning, he rode with them after dinner (from last August he had found himself riding north more often than south, since Marjorie lived in that quarter); and now all had ...

— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson

... witness many of these little eccentricities, from being apprised of the peculiar hobby of mine host; yet, I confess, the parade with which so odd a dish was introduced somewhat perplexed me, until I gathered from the conversation of the Squire and the parson that it was meant to represent the bringing in of the boar's ...

— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving

... cried the General. 'Egad! Won't they?' The old Christian Quixote mounted his hobby, and rode. 'There are things in war that nobody wants to think about. It's an ugly trade. When I was a youngster, and in my first action I was very hard-pressed, and I caught a bayonet out of the hand of a fellow who was dropping at my side, and I had to use it. It's fifty years ago now, but the ...

— VC -- A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray

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