HOBBY • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • 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

... persons in your town, or in your university, about their favorite hobbies, and feature the story as "Riding Hobby Horses with Blank ...

— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer

... his pocket and examined it closely, as he had done several times before. The bright sunlight disclosed nothing but a perfect bit of casting. He took out the pocket lens he carried for examination of specimens that might be useful in his hobby of microscopy, but magnification showed him nothing. ...

— The Egyptian Cat Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin

... principles of logic, that I did not always know the difference between the middle term of a syllogism and its conclusion. It went against his grain to imagine that a mathematician could be a logician. So long as he took me to be riding my own hobby, he laughed consumedly: but when he thought he could make out that I was mounted behind Ploucquet or Lambert, the current ran thus: "It would indeed have been little short of a miracle had he, ignorant even of ...

— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... Springfield I looked him up. Here he was talking of the Lovejoy matter, which led him into a cataloguing of the abolitionists, the anti-Masons, the Spiritualists, the Mormons, free lovers, old centralists, with the Whigs. I think he is proud that he has no hobby in the way of an ideal or ism. He seems unmagnetic to all such things. If he does not look with suspicion upon the reformer and accuse him of masking some selfish purpose, he is likely to think that the reformer is something of a fool. He gazes with an eagle's eye over the whole of American ...

— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters

... grandfather—good man—would have laid down his life to save her a pain in her toe, but he had not a notion of the stuff she was made of. His hobby was the study of the runic crosses with which the Isle of Man abounds, and when she helped him with his rubbings and his casts he was as merry as an old sand-boy. Though they occupied the same house, and her bedroom that faced the ...

— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine

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