hobby-horsey

comparative more hobby-horsey · superlative most hobby-horsey

1. idiomaticinformalEccentrically insular or devoted to a particular topic.

   'The Dalzells of Daisydown' are a hobby-horsey family who live in an old, rambling, Virginia-creeper-covered English mansion and keep up fluctuating relations with friends at Newport. Two of them fall in love with the same young lady […]

   1891, The Critic, volume 18, page 28

   1 more example

   The reporter's insistence on your emphasis on the sub-scale of ordinary Greeks was a deliberate attempt to offset scientific observations by making them appear hobby-horsey. To provide amusement for weak, fat-ridden office workers. What does an outsider know?

   1999, Stanley Elkin, Boswell: A Modern Comedy, page 59