strumpet:"Deridada" ,dada, hobby horse, have a bee in one's bonnet

Campaign Spotlight

Marketer Has New 'Bee' in Its Bonnet: Frozen Meals

By STUART ELLIOTT

A campaign for Bumble Bee SuperFresh has a budget estimated at $25 million, a significant investment for a company that had no measured ad spending in major media last year.

The creative approach for Bumble Bee SuperFresh is in the vein known on Madison Avenue by the phrase "product as hero."

"Derrida"

Jacques Derrida

dada

n.
A European artistic and literary movement (1916–1923) that flouted conventional aesthetic and cultural values by producing works marked by nonsense, travesty, and incongruity.

[French dada, hobbyhorse, Dada, of baby-talk origin.]

Dadaism Da'da·ism n.
Dadaist Da'da·ist adj. & n.
Dadaistic Da'da·is'tic adj.

Hobby-horse

Meaning
A favourite topic that one frequently refers to or dwells on; a fixation.
Origin
The first things that were referred to as hobbies were in fact horses, of a breed that was popular in Ireland in the Middle Ages and is now extinct. The Scottish poet John Barbour referred to them as hobynis, in the narrative poem The Bruce, 1375. In Reliquiae Antiquae, a poetic work of Barbour's from around 1400 and republished in 1841, he referred to them again, this time with a little more context:

And one amang, an Iyrysch man,
Uppone his hoby swyftly ran,

English mummers, morris dance teams and minstrel groups began performing with characters (often children) dressed in wickerwork and cloth costumes, made to look like stylised horses - not altogether unlike the present-day pantomime horses. These 'hobby-horses', which took their name from the Irish breed, are still to be seen as part of the English folk tradition, notably at the annual 'Obby 'Oss festival, celebrated each May Day in Padstow, Cornwall. This custom dates back to at least the 16th century, when a payment for a performance by a hobby-horse was recorded in the Churchwarden's Accounts of St. Mary's Church, Reading, 1557:

Item, payed to the Mynstrels and the Hobby~horse on May Day, 3s.

As time went by, the name hobby-horse was given to numerous other things. For example,
A loose woman or strumpet:

William Shakespeare, Loves Labour's Lost, 1588 - "Cal'st thou my love Hobbi-horse?"

A child's nursery toy:

George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie, 1589 - "King Agesilaus, hauing a great sort of little children... tooke a little hobby horse of wood and bestrid it to keepe them in play."

A dance, similar to the stage antics of the mummers' horses:

Richard Lassels, The Voyage of Italy, circa 1668 - "Women like those that danced anciently the Hobby-horse in Country Mummings."

A favourite pursuit or pastime - later shortened of course just to hobby:

Sir Matthew Hale, Contemplations Moral and Divine, 1676 - "Almost every person hath some hobby horse or other wherein he prides himself."

A wooden horse fixed on a ‘merry-go-round’:

Gray's Letters and Poems, 1741 - "A Fair here is not a place where one eats gingerbread or rides upon hobby-horses."

A velocipede, on which the rider proceeded by pushing the ground with each foot alternately; also called a 'Dandy-horse':

The Gentleman's Magazine, February 1819 - "A machine denominated the Pedestrian Hobby-horse... has been introduced into this country by a tradesman in Long Acre."

It is the 'favourite pastime' version of the name, what we now call simply 'a hobby', that was adopted as a figurative expression meaning 'a fixation; a thing one keeps coming back to', i.e. similar to having a bee in one's bonnet.
So, a hobby is really a hobby-horse. If by any chance you occupy your spare time studying 13th century Irish livestock, your hobby-horse might just be a Hobby horse.

---

The Phrase A Week newsletter goes to 100,000 subscribers (78,500 by e-mail, 21,500 by RSS feed).

Please help support this newsletter.

strumpet

Line breaks: strum|pet

Pronunciation: /ˈstrʌmpɪt

  

/

NOUN

ARCHAIC or HUMOROUS

A female prostitute or a promiscuous woman.

MORE EXAMPLE SENTENCES

Origin

Middle English: of unknown origin.

hobby

 

音節

hob • by¹

発音

hɑ'bi | hɔ'bi

レベル

大学入試程度

hobbyの変化形

hobbies (複数形)

hobbyの慣用句

ride a hobby, hobbyist, （全2件）

[名]（複 -bies）

1 趣味, 道楽

One of my hobbies is making model airplanes.
模型飛行機づくりが趣味です.

2 （子供が遊ぶ）棒馬(hobby horse).

3 ((古))小馬.

ride a ［one's］ hobby

自分の得意な考え［物事］にこだわりすぎる, はた迷惑なほどおはこを出す.

［中英語hobyn. 愛好する馬のRobinまたはRobertという名前から. -yは愛称］

hob・by・ist

[名]道楽者.

hob・by・less

[形]

have a bee in one's bonnet

informal be preoccupied or obsessed about something, especially a scheme or plan of action.