I’ve recently taken up needle-felting, which resulted in this utter monstrosity (pictured next to what it was supposed to look like – I’ve got better since, honestly). And this new hobby got me thinking, why is it called a hobby? Also, don’t give up the day job.
How it started vs how it’s going
In the 14th century the word ‘hobby’ referred to a small horse or pony, specifically one used for riding or racing. This probably comes from the Old English word ‘hobyn’, meaning small horse or pony (well, durr). In the 16th century the term ‘hobby horse’ appeared (in a payment confirmation, which I assume means ‘receipt’), which, if the etymology is correct, is actually a tautology i.e. it says the same thing twice. Like Sahara desert, Gobi desert and Kalahari desert, all of which mean ‘desert desert’ – ‘sahara’ is Arabic for ‘desert’, ‘gobi’ is Mongolian for desert’ and ‘kalahari’ is Tswana (one of the 11 official languages recognised by the South African constitution) for, you’ve guessed it, ‘desert’. Anyway, I digress. If you’re a young person, you might not know what a hobby horse is – a toy which was basically a horse head stuck on a stick that you’d straddle (sounds horrific – no wonder kids today prefer iPads) and run about with pretending to be on an actual horse.
Fast forward three hundred-ish years, and the term ‘hobby’ evolved to refer to any activity that people do for pleasure (except rude ones, obviously) or relaxation in their leisure time.
In the 17th century, people used ‘hobby’ as a bit of an insult, as these pasttimes were seen as something children did. But in the 18th century, with the advent of the industrial revolution and more leisure time for people, hobbies suddenly got cool. Although this might not have happened if anyone then had seen my zombie-alpaca needle-felting disaster.