hackney

To make uninteresting or trite by frequent use.

Adjective

  1. Offered for hire.
    • hackney coaches
  2. Much used; trite; mean.
    • hackney authors
    • 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.:

Origin

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.

Noun

  1. An ordinary horse.
  2. A carriage for hire or a cab.
    • "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),...
  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.
    • Not that the existence of Grub street is to be doubted: it was, indeed, a grim actuality, and many a garreter realised by experience How unhappy's the fate To live by one's pate And to be forced to write hackney for...

Forms

hackneys

Derived

hack hackney cab hackney carriage hackneyed hackneyer hackneyman hackney writer

Verb

  1. To make uninteresting or trite by frequent use.
  2. To use as a hackney.
  3. To carry in a hackney coach.
    • […] To her, who, frugal only that her thrift / May feed excesses she can ill afford, / Is hackneyed home unlackeyed; […] - 1785, William Cowper, The Task:

Forms

hackneys hackneying hackneyed