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Avocation   /ˌævəkˈeɪʃən/   Listen
noun
Avocation  n.  
1.
A calling away; a diversion. (Obs. or Archaic) "Impulses to duty, and powerful avocations from sin."
2.
That which calls one away from one's regular employment or vocation. "Heaven is his vocation, and therefore he counts earthly employments avocations." "By the secular cares and avocations which accompany marriage the clergy have been furnished with skill in common life." 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.
3.
pl. Pursuits; duties; affairs which occupy one's time; usual employment; vocation. "There are professions, among the men, no more favorable to these studies than the common avocations of women." "In a few hours, above thirty thousand men left his standard, and returned to their ordinary avocations." "An irregularity and instability of purpose, which makes them choose the wandering avocations of a shepherd, rather than the more fixed pursuits of agriculture."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Avocation" Quotes from Famous Books



... only a poor ignorant man. But the type you speak of does exist. In Switzerland, I believe, a bell-ringer has for years been collecting material for a heraldic memorial. I should think," he continued, laughing, "that his avocation would ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans

... turned they were surrounded and beleaguered by malicious spirits, who were perpetually manifesting their presence by supernatural arts. Watchful fiends stood beside every altar, they mingled with every avocation of life, and the Christians were the special objects of their hatred. All this was universally believed, and was realized with an intensity which, in this secular age, we can scarcely conceive. The bearing ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... a cluster of beautiful flowers, covered as it were by a glass shade, but which turns out to be only water. There a miniature palace is in course of erection, with crowds of workmen in its different storeys, each man at his avocation with hammer and chisel, pulley and wheel, and the grave architect himself directing their labour. All this is set in motion by water, and is not a mere doll's house, but a symmetrical model. Then we enter a subterranean grotto, with a roof ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie

... interpreted, the esteemed camel-driver. Our landlord, Giorgius, the head of this family, was a young man hardly out of his teens; and having some competency, and being moreover un beau garcon, did not follow either his ancestral, or any other avocation. The harem, or woman's portion of the house, was composed of his mother, a fair widow of forty, and her two daughters, both Eastern beauties of their kind, Sarah and Nasarah (meaning Victory or Victoria;) ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... Stoddard, Utopia; Alan Seeger, Oneata; J. G. Neihardt, The Poet's Town.] Sometimes he gives them the plaintive assurance that he is overtaxed with imaginary work. But occasionally he seems to be really stung by their reproaches, and tries to convince them that by following a strenuous avocation he has done his bit for society, and has earned his hours of ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins


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