Skip to main content
hobbyhorse

hobbyhorse

1 8.1
A topic a person talks about all the time
  • noun
  • /ˈhɑbiˌhɔrs/
  • Archaic
translation icon : tema recurrente
  • Environmental conservation has been her hobbyhorse for as long as I can remember, and she never fails to discuss it at every meeting.

Examples

  • But unlike the crazies on the right, they're not building their political philosophy around those manies, and they're not trying to pass laws that say everybody has to believe what they believe, or arguing that the original interpretation of the Constitution depends on their little hobbyhorse, whatever it happens to be.

    Blog text (12)
  • As Selma Vilhunen describes a key finding of her recent documentary film Hobbyhorse Revolution, "teenagers with growing pains... discover their own voice and talent through riding and making hobbyhorses" (Tuffifilms 2017; also Fig. 3).

    Academic text (2018)
  • The concept of "mainstreaming" has become their hobbyhorse.

    Academic text (1991)
  • People just performing the basic expectations of their job are just another of my hobbyhorses.

    Blog text (20)
  • On Saturday, I'll be on my anti-football hobbyhorse in honor of the Harvard-Yale game.

    Blog text (14)
  • All the leftist hobbyhorses rode into town and settled in the projects.

    Blog text (24)
  • He is well known to have ridden hobbyhorses before.

  • "Throughout untold centuries, I must confess, the acquiring of lucre has been a major hobbyhorse of mine."

    Fiction book (1998)
  • The sixth principle of snark: the hobbyhorse principle. Reduce all human complexity to caricature. Then repeat the caricature.

    Blog text (25)
  • The Washington Post's Eugene Robinson gets on his favorite hobbyhorse today when he claims again in his column that voter ID laws are nothing more than a manifestation of racism.

    Blog text (2)

Synonyms

hobby horse
vshobbyhorse
  • Archaic
1 7.6

A subject someone is too excited about and often mentions

is written as two separate words rather than as one

Antonyms

1 6.1

A state of not feeling worried or interested about something

How Obsessive

fixation
24 7.5
hobbyhorse
  • Archaic
1 8.1
enthusiasm
288 2.2
hobby
297 1.0
to interest
206 1.0

Surface Forms

hobbyhorse singular
hobbyhorses plural

Morphology

hobbyhorse = hobby + horse (opaque) = hobby + horse

Although historically a compound of 'hobby' and 'horse', the sense 'favorite topic or obsession' is a figurative extension that learners would not predict from the parts.

Etymology

Hobbyhorse also means a topic someone talks about all the time. A helpful image is a person 'riding' the same toy horse again and again, so to 'ride your hobbyhorse' came to mean 'keep returning to the same idea', which is why hobbyhorse now means a favourite or repeated topic.