Hobbies and Hobby Horse

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Katie from Traverse City, Michigan.

Katie, what would you like to talk about?

I have a question about the word hobby.

My husband and I were recently on our honeymoon in Canada, and we were walking around there, and we passed quite a few hobby shops.

And it kind of made me start thinking, like, what is a hobby?

My husband and I are both musicians, and we’re pretty active.

You know, we walk a lot, we bike, we like to read and garden, those kind of things.

But we both agreed that we wouldn’t really consider those things hobbies.

And so a few days ago, we were at a dinner party with some friends, and I brought this question up and it kind of led to a pretty lively discussion with some of us really coming down firmly on the side of hobby as being particularly narrow or frivolous activity, like stamp collecting or tinkering with your car or something, and other people really thinking that it meant more really like any pastime, like walking or gardening or sports activities.

Yeah, I bet that was an interesting discussion, a lively discussion.

I could see the division right away.

That’s a great question.

Yeah, as soon as you said that, I can say, you know what, I have that same discrepancy in my own understanding of hobby.

So you said that playing music for you isn’t a hobby.

Right, yeah, it feels like playing music or walking, like, I think are really, like, essential part of my day.

So you take an after-dinner walk or something, and you don’t count that as a hobby, it’s just something you like to do.

Right, it’s something, like, I feel like I really need to do.

Yeah.

We do have both meanings of hobby in American English and as far as I know in British English.

So that a lot of people seem to believe it’s just something, anything that you do regularly with your leisure time.

So it’s not related to making money or it’s not a chore where you’re cleaning the house, for example.

But it’s something you do when you have nothing else to do.

And that’s a hobby.

But yet a lot of people, and this is the one that interests me the most because it connects to the etymology of the word hobby.

That’s where I was going.

A lot of people think that hobby is something you not only do it in your leisure time, but you do it kind of obsessively and constantly and with like almost like if you have a mission and you can’t stop yourself.

Well, I was thinking etymologically.

I mean, it originally goes back to a small diminutive horse, a little pony.

And there is, I think, a certain connotation of, you know, it’s not the same thing as a passion, you know, a grand passion or your bliss.

There’s a certain demeaning element in some people’s understanding of the word hobby.

Well, certainly.

If you’re a Calvinist and you think that all only work is good, then anything that’s not work, any leisure must be bad.

You know, a hobby horse.

I mean, there have been instances where people have talked about somebody’s hobby and there’s a little bit of condescension or something to it.

So just to lay this etymology out so you can understand a little better, it starts out as a nickname for Robert.

And then apparently horses were often called Robert, so therefore they were also called Robin or Dobbin and Hobby.

And then Hobby Horse became a name.

And then the children’s toy appeared, you know, the stick with the horse’s head, that the children would gallop around.

Now, children can be very obsessive about something they like to do.

They can do it for hours on end, day after day, year after year, for a very long time.

And I can just in my mind envision children galloping around on their hobby horse in this kind of obsessive, monomaniac way and never leaving it alone.

And then hobby is shortened again from hobby horse back to hobby and refers to anything that you do with that kind of constant, regular activity.

And then it kind of comes forward to the two different meanings that we have today.

One is just anything you do in your leisure time.

And the other one is anything you do in your leisure time that you do with a kind of a passion or drive or energy.

It almost seems a little outdated in a way.

Like, you know, like I would say my peers maybe don’t use that word very often.

That’s so interesting.

Yeah, and hobby shops.

I had to go to a hobby shop to find a part for something that I was working on recently.

And it was odd to me walking into something called a hobby shop.

It felt like walking into a toy store rather than, you know, rather than, you know, REI or something.

It’s interesting.

Well, I wonder what our listeners think about this.

Yeah, how do you see a hobby?

What do you have in your life that you call your hobby?

877-929-9673 or email words@waywordradio.org.

Katie, this is a great question.

I think we’re going to get a lot of response on this.

Yeah, we’re going to continue this conversation.

All right, thank you.

Thanks for starting it.

Bye-bye.

All right, bye-bye.