- This article is about pastimes. For the bird species, see hobby
(bird). For the horse species, see hobby (horse).
A hobby is a spare-time pursuit.
In the Middle Ages, falconry
was a very popular pastime (what today might be called a hobby), and of all the different birds used for it, the
Eurasian Hobby was perhaps the most popular. It is said that the modern
use of hobby to indicate a pastime followed from this.
An alternative explanation is that the usage grew from another recreational animal called hobby: which was a type of
small ambling or pacing horse. A hobby-horse was a wooden or wickerwork toy made to be ridden just like the real hobby.
From this came the expression "to ride one's hobby-horse", meaning "to follow a favourite pastime", and in turn, hobby
in the modern sense of recreation.
Hobbies are practised for interest and enjoyment, rather than financial reward. Examples include collecting, making, tinkering, sports and adult education.
Engaging in a hobby can lead to acquiring substantial skill, knowledge, and experience. However, personal fulfillment is the
aim.
What are hobbies for some people are professions for others: a computer game tester may enjoy cooking as a hobby, while a
professional chef might enjoy playing (and helping to debug) computer games. Generally speaking, the person who does something for fun, not remuneration, is called an
amateur (or hobbyist), as distinct from a professional.
An important determinant of what is considered a hobby, as distinct from a profession (beyond the lack of remuneration), is probably how easy it is to make a living at the activity.
Almost no one can make a living at stamp collecting, but many
people find it enjoyable; so it is commonly regarded as a hobby.
Astronomy is an interesting hobby in that the amateurs often make meaningful
contributions to the professionals. It is not entirely uncommon for an amateur astronomer to be the first to discover a celestial body or event.
In the UK, the pejorative noun anorak is
often applied to people who obsessively pursue a particular hobby. It was reportedly derived from the weatherproof upper clothing
worn by enthusiasts of offshore radio who would, despite their lack of
familiarity with maritime life, sometimes travel from British ports in small boats to visit the ships from which their outcast
heroes broadcast during the 1967-76 period. The collective impression of their brightly coloured garments in the coastal murk of
the North Sea was presumably memorable to the crews of those "pirate ships" who had restricted contact with the mainland due to
the Marine Broadcasting Offences
Act and the visits might have had an important morale-boosting role, although the wearers of the garments might often have
regretted the discomfort of those sea-tossed journeys. In rough weather presumably the anoraks were far more apparent than their
distressed wearers so those people were identified just by the name of their outer garments. The term was reportedly coined by
Andy Archer, a disc jockey who gained fame in the period following the passing of that Act by the government of Harold Wilson. The usage then become generalised to mean obsessive enthusiasts of
any outdoor activity, and later to cover enthusiasts of other unfashionable activities too.
Whilst some hobbies strike many people as trivial or boring, hobbyists have found something compelling and entertaining about
them (see geek). Much early scientific research was, in effect, a hobby of the wealthy; in
our own time, Linux began as a student's hobby. A hobby may not be as trivial as it
appears at a point in time when it has relatively few followers. Thus a British conservationist recalls that when seen wearing
field glasses at a London station in the 1930's he was asked if he was going to the (horse) races. The anecdote indicates that at
the time an interest in wildlife was not widely perceived as a credible hobby. Practitioners of that hobby went on to become the
germs of the conservation movement that flourished in Britain from 1965 onwards and became a global political movement within a
generation. Conversely, the hobby of aircraft spotting probably
originated as part of a serious activity designed to detect arriving waves of enemy aircraft entering English airspace during
World War Two. In peacetime it clearly has no such practical or social
purpose.
Pursuit of a hobby may have calming or helpful therapeutic side effects. In some cases, however, (for example in collecting)
the line between a hobby and an obsession can become blurred. There is more than one documented case of violence over things as
simple as coin collecting.
See also
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