Hobby
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
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
cigarette card or stamp collecting, but many people find it enjoyable; so it is commonly regarded as a hobby.
Amateur
astronomers often make meaningful contributions to the professionals. It is not entirely uncommon for a hobbyist to be the first to discover a
celestial body or
event.
In the
UK, the pejorative noun
anorak (similar to the Japanese "
otaku", 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 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 II. 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.
The hobby of
collecting consists of acquiring specific items based on a particular interest of the collector. These
collections of things are often highly organized, carefully cataloged, and attractively displayed.Since collecting depends on the interests of the individual collector, it may deal with almost any subject. The depth and breadth of the collection may also vary. Some collectors choose to focus on a specific subtopic within their area of general interest: for example,
19th Century postage stamps, milk bottle labels from
Sussex, or Mongolian harnesses and tack. Others prefer to keep a more general collection, accumulating
Star Trek merchandise, or stamps from all countries of the world.Some collections are capable of being completed, at least to the extent of owning one sample of each possible item in the collection (e.g. a copy of every
book by
Agatha Christie). Collectors who specifically try to assemble complete collections in this way are sometimes called "
completists." Upon completing a particular collection, they may stop collecting, expand the collection to include related items, or begin an entirely new collection.The most popular fields in collecting have specialized commercial dealers that trade in the items being collected, as well as related accessories. Many of these dealers started as collectors themselves, then turned their hobby into a
profession.There are some limitations on collecting, however. Someone who has the financial means to collect stamps might not be able to collect
sports-cars, for example. One alternative to collecting physical objects is collecting experiences of a particular kind. Examples include collecting through observation or
photography (especially popular for transportation, e.g.
train spotting,
aircraft spotting,
metrophiles,
bus spotting; see also
I-Spy),
bird-watching, and systematically visiting states, countries, continents, national parks, etc.
Cooking is an act of preparing
food for
eating. It encompasses a vast range of methods, tools and combinations of
ingredients to improve the
flavour or
digestibility of food. It generally requires the selection, measurement and combining of ingredients in an ordered procedure in an effort to achieve the desired result. Constraints on success include the variability of ingredients, ambient conditions,
tools and the skill of the individual cooking.The diversity of cooking worldwide is a reflection of the myriad nutritional, aesthetic, agricultural, economic, cultural and religious considerations that impact upon it.Cooking requires applying heat to a food which usually, though not always, chemically transforms it, thus changing its flavor, texture, appearance, and nutritional properties. Cooking proper, as opposed to roasting, requires the boiling of water in a receptable, and was practiced at least since the
10th millennium BC with the introduction of
pottery. There is archaeological evidence of roasted foodstuffs, both animal and vegetable, in human (
Homo erectus) campsites dating from the earliest known use of
fire some 800,000 years ago.
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Tug of war is an easily organized, impromptu game that requires little equipment. |
A
game is a structured or semi-structured
recreational
activity, usually undertaken for
enjoyment (although sometimes for physical or vocational
training). A goal that the
players try to reach and a set of
rules concerning what the players can or cannot do create the
challenge and
structure in a game, and are thus central to its definition.Known to have been played as far back as
prehistoric times, games are generally distinct from
work, which is usually carried out for
remuneration. Because a wide variety of activities are enjoyable, numerous types of games have developed.What creates an enjoyable game varies from one individual to the next. Age, understanding (of the game), intelligence level, and (to some extent)
personality are factors that determine what games a person enjoys. Depending on these factors, people vary the number and complexity of objectives, rules, challenges, and participants to increase their enjoyment.Games generally involve mental and/or physical stimulation. For this reason, they are beneficial after a large meal or a long and tedious task, but counterproductive if played immediately before
sleeping. Many games help develop practical
skills and serve as
exercise or perform an
educational,
simulational or
psychological role.
Gardening is the art of growing
plants with the goal of crafting a purposeful landscape.
Residential gardening most often takes place in or about a residence, in a space referred to as the
garden. Although a garden typically is located on the land near a residence, it may also be located in a
roof, in an
atrium, on a
balcony, in a
windowbox, or on a
patio or
vivarium.
Gardening also takes place in non-residential green areas, such as
parks, public or semi-public gardens (
botanical gardens or
zoological gardens),
amusement and
theme parks, along transportation corridors, and around
tourist attractions and
hotels. In these situations, a staff of
gardeners or
groundskeepers maintains the gardens.
Indoor gardening is concerned with the growing of
houseplants within a
residence or building, in a
conservatory, or in a
greenhouse.
Indoor gardens are sometimes incorporated as part of
air conditioning or
heating systems.
Water gardening is concerned with growing plants adapted to pools and ponds.
Bog gardens are also considered a type of water garden. These all require special conditions and considerations. A simple water garden may consist solely of a tub containing the water and plant(s).
Outdoor pursuits can be loosely considered to be the group of
sports and
activities which are dependent on the great
outdoors, incorporating such things as
hill walking,
trekking,
canoeing,
kayaking,
climbing,
caving, and arguably broader groups such as
watersports and
snowsport.
While obviously enjoyed by many as a bit of fun, an adrenaline rush, or an escape from reality, outdoor sport is also frequently used as an extremely effective medium in education and
teambuilding. It is this ethos that has given rise to links with young people, such as the
Duke of Edinburgh's Award and PGL, and large numbers of outdoor education centres being established, as the stress on the importance of a balanced and widespread education continues to grow.
As interest increases, so has the rise of commercial outdoor pursuits, with outdoor kit stores opening up in large numbers and thriving, as well as outdoor pursuits
journalism and magazines, both on paper (for example Trail [
1]), and online (such as Eclipse Outdoor [
2]).
The increased acessibility of outdoor pursuits resources has been the source of some negative press over the years also, with complaints of destroying the
landscape. A widely-seen example is the destruction of
hillsides as
footpaths are eroded by excessive numbers of visitors.
*
List of hobbies*
Quality time*
Hobby-horse
