Hobby-horse

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Alternative spelling of hobby horse. alt-of, alternative

    "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."

Example

More examples

"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."

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.