Recreation entered English as refreshment for the sick
Recreation is leisure done for enjoyment—fun as a biological need to do something restorative. English borrowed the term in the late fourteenth century for refreshing or curing the sick, from Latin re- plus creare. Free time left after work, sleep, and duties is its prerequisite.
Longer lives and, for many people, fewer hours spent securing food and income have expanded leisure, though some argue modern schedules feel more pressed than ever. Children’s version is usually called play, and youngsters often mimic grown-up tasks; one theory treats play as a way of channelling surplus energy into acceptable outlets. Work and recreation blur as well: a musician paid to perform may play the same instrument for fun at home, and pastimes can turn into jobs or the reverse. Recreational mathematics sits similarly between study and amusement.
Leisure brings health benefits, which the field of Therapeutic Recreation puts to use; in the United States the National Council for Therapeutic Recreation Certification, NCTRC, credentials its practitioners. Pastimes can be solitary or shared, indoor or outdoor, wholesome or harmful, and gambling, drug taking and delinquency are often restricted by law. Hobbies are regular unpaid pursuits such as collecting or sport, while DIY and bricolage cover building and repairing things without professionals, including landscaping.
Outdoor recreation depends on setting: fishing, hunting, backpacking and riding need wild places, and competition matters less than in organised sport. Hiking, canoeing, caving, sailing, skiing and surfing are old favourites, while hybrids like coasteering, canyoning, fastpacking and plogging have earned names of their own. Participatory dance, from folk and square dances to Western ballroom, is done by participants rather than spectators.
Before recordings, music lovers of the Classical and Romantic eras bought sheet music to play favourite pieces at home. Drawing reaches back at least 16,000 years to animal images at Lascaux and Altamira, and painted bison, horses and deer in the Chauvet cave may be 32,000 years old. Once paper spread through Europe in the fifteenth century, Botticelli, Raphael, Michelangelo and Leonardo sometimes treated drawing as an art in itself.
Source: Recreation
