Search Result for "avocation": 
Wordnet 3.0

NOUN (1)

1. an auxiliary activity;
[syn: avocation, by-line, hobby, pursuit, sideline, spare-time activity]


The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48:

Avocation \Av`o*ca"tion\, n. [L. avocatio.] 1. A calling away; a diversion. [Obs. or Archaic] [1913 Webster] Impulses to duty, and powerful avocations from sin. --South. [1913 Webster] 2. That which calls one away from one's regular employment or vocation. [1913 Webster] Heaven is his vocation, and therefore he counts earthly employments avocations. --Fuller. [1913 Webster] By the secular cares and avocations which accompany marriage the clergy have been furnished with skill in common life. --Atterbury. [1913 Webster] Note: In this sense the word is applied to the smaller affairs of life, or occasional calls which summon a person to leave his ordinary or principal business. Avocation (in the singular) for vocation is usually avoided by good writers. [1913 Webster] 3. pl. Pursuits; duties; affairs which occupy one's time; usual employment; vocation. [1913 Webster] There are professions, among the men, no more favorable to these studies than the common avocations of women. --Richardson. [1913 Webster] In a few hours, above thirty thousand men left his standard, and returned to their ordinary avocations. --Macaulay. [1913 Webster] An irregularity and instability of purpose, which makes them choose the wandering avocations of a shepherd, rather than the more fixed pursuits of agriculture. --Buckle. [1913 Webster]
WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006):

avocation n 1: an auxiliary activity [syn: avocation, by-line, hobby, pursuit, sideline, spare-time activity]