Definition of "hackney"

hackney

/ˈhækni/

noun
countable and uncountable, plural hackneys
1. (archaic) An ordinary horse.
2. A carriage for hire or a cab.
  Quotations
  "Mamma would die if she knew. The boy," replied Georgiana, "walked with us to Oxford Street, and we took a hackney-coach. Will Mrs. Gooch ever forgive us for getting out of it at her door?"
  1838 (date written), L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XIV, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn, […], published 1842, page 186
3. A horse used to ride or drive.
4. A breed of English horse.
5. (archaic) A hired drudge; a hireling; a prostitute.
6. (archaic, uncountable) Inferior writing; literary hackwork.
  Quotations
  Not that the existence of Grub street is to be doubted: it was, indeed, a grim actuality, and many a garreter realised by experienceHow unhappy's the fateTo live by one's pateAnd to be forced to write hackney for bread.
  quoted in 1972, Pat Rogers, Grub Street: Studies in a Subculture (page 384)
adjective
not comparable
1. Offered for hire.
2. (figuratively) Much used; trite; mean.
  Quotations
  his accumulative and hackney tongue
  a. 1685, Wentworth Dillon, 4th Earl of Roscommon, The Ghost of the old House of Commons to the new one appointed to meet at Oxford.
verb
third-person singular simple present hackneys, present participle hackneying, simple past and past participle hackneyed
1. (transitive) To make uninteresting or trite by frequent use.
2. (transitive) To use as a hackney.
3. (transitive) To carry in a hackney coach.
  Quotations
  […] To her, who, frugal only that her thrift / May feed excesses she can ill afford, / Is hackneyed home unlackeyed; […]
  1785, William Cowper, The Task

Definition of "hackney"

hackney

noun

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Quotations

adjective

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verb

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