hobby-horse

See also: hobbyhorse and hobby horse

English

Noun

hobby-horse (plural hobby-horses)

1. Alternative spelling of hobby horse
   • 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:

     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.