Dictionaries › English

hackney

Pronunciation: /ˈhækni/

The English word “hackney” has 11 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. An ordinary horse.
  2. A carriage for hire or a cab.
  3. A horse used to ride or drive.
  4. A breed of English horse.
  5. A hired drudge; a hireling; a prostitute.
  6. Inferior writing; literary hackwork.

adjective

  1. Offered for hire.
  2. Much used; trite; mean.

verb

  1. To make uninteresting or trite by frequent use.
  2. To use as a hackney.
  3. To carry in a hackney coach.

Etymology

From Middle English hakeney, from the placename Hackney (formerly a town; now a borough of London), used for grazing horses before sale, from Old English *Hacan īeġ (“Haca's Island”, literally “Hook's Island”). The Old French haquenée (“ambling mare for ladies”), Latinized in England to hakeneius, is originally from the English.

Keep exploring: in the interactive dictionary every word of a definition is a link. Open “hackney” there

More English words

About this dictionary

The English dictionary on Glottosphere has 650,529 entries with a page. Browse the English dictionary.

Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.