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. The Middle Ages formed the middle period in a traditional schematic division of European history into three ages: the classical civilization of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times, beginning with the Renaissance. ... Falconry is the art or sport of training raptors (birds of prey) to hunt or pursue game. ... Binomial name Falco subbuteo Linnaeus, 1758 The Eurasian Hobby (Falco subbuteo), or just simply Hobby, is a medium-sized falcon. ...

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. This page is a candidate to be moved to Wiktionary. ... Tigers playing in the water Recreation is the employment of time in a non-profitable way, in many ways also a therapeutic refreshment of ones body or mind. ...

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. The hobby of collecting consists of acquiring specific items based on a particular interest of the collector. ...

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. A computer game tester is a person whose profession consists of testing video and computer games in order to find bugs, errors and possible conflicts as a quality control process. ... Cooking is the act of preparing food for consumption. ... A chef (also executive chef or chef de cuisine), from the French for chief or head person, is the executive in charge of a kitchen, responsible for recipe and menu creation, staff training, and overseeing all cooking. ... A computer game is a game composed of a computer-controlled virtual universe that players interact with in order to achieve a defined goal or set of goals. ... The word amateur has at least two connotations. ... A professional does something as a profession, or receives payment for some activity. ...

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. A profession is a specialized work function within society, generally performed by a professional. ... Stamp collecting is the collecting of postage stamps and related objects, such as envelopes (cover)s. ...

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. Astronomy (Greek: αστρονομία = άστρον + νόμος, literally, law of the stars) is the science involving the observation and explanation of events occurring beyond the Earth and its atmosphere. ... See lists of astronomical objects for a list of the various lists of astronomical objects in Wikipedia. ... A celestial event is an astronomical phenomenon of interest that involves one or more astronomical bodies. ...

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. In British slang, anorak has come to mean geek or nerd, originally from the use of anoraks as the invariable wear of train spotters, and then by extension to refer to anyone with an unfathomable interest in detailed information regarded as boring by the rest of the population - aided by... In English, an otaku (plural usually otaku, since Japanese words are not pluralized using an s) is a variety of geek (or an overly obsessed fanboy / fangirl) specializing in anime and manga. ...

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 II. In peacetime it clearly has no such practical or social purpose. A geek is a person who is fascinated, perhaps obsessively, by technology and imagination. ... Tux, a penguin, is the official Linux mascot. ... Conservationists are those people who tend to more highly rank the wise use of the Earths resources and ecosystems. ... The Conservation movement was an American invention of John Audubon and others who invoked Christian reverence for the Creation to protect natural habitat from man in the 19th century. ... Aircraft spotting is a hobby involving the enjoyment, observation and photography of aircraft: gliders, powered aircraft, large balloons, airships, helicopters, and microlights. ... Mushroom cloud from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rising 18 km into the air. ...

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

• List of hobbies
• Quality time
• Hobby store
• Hobby-horse