Noun: hobby
| Singular | hobby |
| Plural | hobbies |
Sample Sentences
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I like to collect stamps from different countries as a hobby.
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take up a hobby
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give up your hobby
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I was out a-hunting to-day, and I got away to a place in the wood I’d never seen before. And there was an old chalk-pit. And I heard a kind of a sort of humming. So I got off my hobby, and I went right quiet to the pit, and I looked down. [1890, Joseph Jacobs, “Tom Tit Tot”, in English Fairy Tales, page 7:]
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"Well, I think East is right," said Arthur; "I can't see but what it's right to do the best you can, though it mayn't be the best absolutely. Every man isn't born to be a martyr."
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"Of course, of course," said East; "but he's on one of his pet hobbies. — How often have I told you, Tom, that you must drive a nail where it'll go." [1857, Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's School Days:]
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I'm more into the competitive part than the hobby part of this game.
Nouns inflected like hobby
clitoridectomy,
royal jelly,
whoopsy,
surrogacy,
urinary,
rastrography,
renoscopy,
sourtop blueberry,
forcible entry,
superficiary,
lipidosity,
potability,
phonography,
hyperproperty,
greenery,
conjugality,
ring singularity,
Brittany,
ignobility,
obscurity, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
1. Shortened from hobby-horse, from Middle English hoby, hobyn, hobin (“small horse, pony”), from Old French hobi, *haubi, haubby, hobin ("a nag, hobby"; > Modern French aubin, Italian ubino), of Germanic origin: from Old French hober, ober (“to stir, move”), from Old Dutch hobben (“to toss, move up and down”); or from North Germanic origin related to Danish hoppe (“a mare”), Old Swedish hoppa (“a young mare”), North Frisian hoppe (“horse”); both ultimately from Proto-Germanic *huppōną (“to hop”), from Proto-Indo-European *kewb- (“to bend; a bend, joint”). More at hop, hobble.
2. The meaning of hobby-horse shifted from "small horse, pony" to "child's toy riding horse" to "favorite pastime or avocation" with the connecting notion being "activity that doesn't go anywhere". Possibly originally from a proper name for a horse, a diminutive of Robert or Robin (compare dobbin). See: Danish Nouns '
hoppe'.
Verbs referencing "hobby"
Catalan Nouns
hobby, Danish Nouns
hobby, Dutch Nouns
hobby, Finnish Nouns
hobby, French Nouns
hobby, Norwegian Bokmål Nouns
hobby, Norwegian Nynorsk Nouns
hobby, Romanian Nouns
hobby, Finnish Nouns
hoppa, Latvian Nouns
hobijs.