Dictionary

hobby-horse en · NOUN

Meanings

1. (alt-of, alternative) Alternative spelling of hobby horse.
   alt of hobby horse
   • The discordant minstrelsy of every kind renewed its din; the boys shrieked and howled, and the men laughed and halloed, and the women giggled and screamed, and the beasts roared, and the dragon wallopp’d and hissed, and the hobby-horse neighed, pranced, and capered, and the rest frisked and frolicked, clashing their hob-nailed shoes against the pavement, till it sparkled with the marks of their energetic caprioles. 1820, [Walter Scott], chapter XIV, in The Abbot. […], volume I, Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne & Co.] for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; and for Archibald Constable and Company, and John Ballantyne, […], →OCLC, pages 300–301:
   • WHEN a man gives himself up to the government of a ruling passion,—or, in other words, when his HOBBY-HORSE grows headstrong,——farewell cool reason and fair discretion! 1659, Laurence Sterne, chapter XXX, in The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman:

Forms