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A hobby is a spare-time recreational 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 professionA profession is a specialized work function within society, generally performed by a professional. Definitions In a more restrictive sense, profession often refers specifically to fields that require extensive study and mastery of specialized knowledge, s (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 collectingStamp collecting is the collecting of postage stamps and related objects, such as envelopes (cover)s. It is one of the world's most popular hobbies, with estimates of the number of collectors ranging up to 20 million. Collecting is not the same as philate, but many people find it enjoyable; so it is commonly regarded as a hobby.
AstronomyAstronomy which etymologically means " law of the stars," (from Greek: + nomos) is a science involving the observation and explanation of events occurring outside Earth and its atmosphere. It studies the origins, evolution, physical and chemical propertie 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 bodyCelestial body is a term describing astronomical objects such as stars, planets and natural satellites. See also Astronomical object hypothetical planet Astronomy. or eventA celestial event is an astronomical phenomenon of interest that involves one or more astronomical bodies. Examples of celestial events include the various phases of the Moon, meteor showers, comets, solar and lunar eclipses, planetary oppositions, conjun.In the UKThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a state in Western Europe, usually known simply as the United Kingdom the UK Britain or less accurately as Great Britain . The UK was formed by a series of Acts of Union which united the formerly, the pejorative noun anorakThis article is about the article of clothing. For alternate meanings see Anorak (slang) and Anorak (newspaper). An anorak or parka is a type of heavy jacket with a hood, generally lined with fur or fun fur, so as to protect the face from a combination of (similar to the Japanese " otakuIn English, an otaku (plural usually otaku though otakus is not unknown) is a variety of geek (or an overly obsessed fanboy/ fangirl) specializing in anime and manga. The word is a loanword from the Japanese language, in which it is derived from an honori", meaning a geek or enthusiast) is often applied to people who obsessively pursue a particular hobby.
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; more recently, 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 1930s 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.
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