Hobby

[Dr. Goodword]

• hobby •

Pronunciation: hah-bi • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun

Meaning: Pastime, avocation, an auxiliary activity as an end in itself, with no compensation except sheer enjoyment.

Notes: A hobby might become a business, but then it isn't a hobby. A hobby leads nowhere. We have a few derivations from this word. A hobbyist is someone who pursues an activity as a hobby, not work. Hobbyless is said of someone who has no hobby.

In Play: 2020 is a good year to have an at-home hobby: "Having a hobby you can do at home is a boon during a pandemic." Anything we don't take seriously and leads nowhere may be called a hobby: "Cruising the bars in town and flirting with men was Lucy Lastik's favorite hobby."

Word History: Today's Good Word is a shortening of hobby-horse, which refers to a toy horse that is active but goes nowhere. It probably comes from a motherese (child talk) form of 'hobbled horse', since, once hobbled, a horse may bounce around but goes nowhere. Hobble also means "to walk unsteadily" and we find cousins all around the Germanic languages: Dutch hobbelen "to rock from side to side; stammer" and German hoppeln "to walk ungainly, clumsily". It is apparently related to hop. The Germanic word for "horse" seems not to have derived from PIE ekwo-, but kers- "to run". It is also the source of Latin currere "to run, move quickly", the ultimate source of English current. Latin also inherited carrus "wagon" from the same PIE word. Carrus worked its way down to English through French as both car and cart. (Today's Good Word was a thought of Jan Linders, who graciously shared it with us.)

[damoge]

The modern word for horse in German is Pferd. There is an older word-- Ros (I think older, was told it is not used much now but remains in old names. For example, a friend's name is Rosberg--horse mountain).

I have no idea how to find out anything about the etymology of words in English, let alone German.

Seems to me that ros might be more related to our horses than pferd, but have no way to check that out either...

Any suggestions where either of these came from?

[Dr. Goodword]

The best online source of English etymology is www.etymonline.com.

Modern German Ross means "stallion".

--RB

[bnjtokyo]

I put "German Etymological Dictionary" in the search bar and got this link
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/An_Etymo ... n_Language

Then, looking under "P" I found Pferd that led to the following
(Note that as German is currently written "Roß" is "Ross"):
Pferd, neuter, ‘horse,’ from Middle High German pfërt (-des), neuter, ‘horse,’ especially ‘riding-horse, lady’s horse’ (in contrast to Roß, ‘war-horse’), with the earlier variants pfërit for *pfërirît, Old High German (from the 10th century) pferfrī̆t, pfarifrī̆d; corresponding to Low German pęrid, Dutch paard. The word seems to be Franconian and Saxon (in the Upper German dialects the old terms Roß and Gaul are still the prevalent terms; it was probably borrowed (about the 8th century?) from the early Middle Latin paraverêdus, parifredus (f for v as in Käfig; the change of v into f in this case, however, is common to Teutonic). Parverêdus, ‘horse,’ literally ‘near horse,’ is derived from Greek παρά and Middle Latin verêdus, ‘horse’ (allied to Keltic rêda, ‘waggon’). In the Keltic group, Welsh gorwydd, ‘steed,’ was retained. The Romance languages retain the Middle Latin word (in the Middle Latin collateral form palafrêdus, palafrênus) in the sense of ‘palfrey’; compare French palefroi (English palfrey), Latin palafreno.

Then, looking further, I found this under "Roß"
Roß(1.), neuter, ‘horse, steed,’ from Middle High German and Old High German ros (genitive rosses), neuter, ‘horse,’ especially ‘charger,’ for earlier *hrossa-; compare Old Saxon hross, Dutch ros, Anglo-Saxon hors, English horse, Old Icelandic hross, neuter, ‘horse.’ Gothic *hrussa- is wanting, the term used being Old Aryan aíhwa- (Old Saxon ëhu, Anglo-Saxon eoh, Old Icelandic jór), equivalent to Latin equus, Greek ἵππος, Sanscrit áçva-s (Lithuanian aszvà, ‘mare’). In Middle High German the term Pferd appears; Roß is still used almost exclusively in Upper German with the general sense of ‘horse.’ From the Teutonic cognates is derived the Romance term, French rosse, ‘sorry horse, jade,’ The origin of Teutonic hrussa- is uncertain; as far as the meaning is concerned, it may be compared, as is usually done, with Latin currere for *curs-ere, *cṛs-ere, root kṛs, ‘to run,’ or with the Sanscrit root kûrd, ‘to leap,’ with which Old Icelandic hress, ‘quick,’ may also be connected. For another derivation see rüsten —

Finally,the Etymonline entry for "horse" also cites Roß as being of "unknown origin"
https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=horse
horse (n.)
"solidungulate perissodactyl mammal of the family Equidæ and genus Equus" [Century Dictionary], Old English hors "horse," from Proto-Germanic *harss- (source also of Old Norse hross, Old Frisian, Old Saxon hors, Middle Dutch ors, Dutch ros, Old High German hros, German Roß "horse"), of unknown origin. By some, connected to PIE root *kers- "to run," source of Latin currere "to run." Boutkan prefers the theory that it is a loan-word from an Iranian language (Sarmatian) also borrowed into Uralic (compare Finnish varsa "stallion")

I hope this doesn't muddy the water too much.

[damoge]

WOW! That's FABULOUS!
Thanks for spending so much time on that!
I'm copying all that to send on to the friend, and reserve for my own perusing later as the details fade (short term memory deficit) and to be sure to have access to the links.
Thanks to you, too, Good Doctor. That's another link I shall retain.

Debby

[call_copse]

You're not friends with Nico Rosberg are you damoge?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nico_Rosberg

I wouldn't be surprised to be fair

[Dr. Goodword]

I also enjoyed it. Some of it I'm putting up tonight under palfrey. Unfortunately, I feel I have space limitations.

Good job, BNJTokyo. Thank you for a good job of research.

[Dr. Goodword]

I think the English word comes from the PIE word for "run": kers-/kors-. The [k] becomes [kh] in Germanic languages which most often reduces to [h]. So, now you've got hors-. The Celtic word for "horse" seems to be based on red-/rod- "ride".