Word
hackney
Phoneticshack·ney
US/ˈhækni/
UK/hˈækni/
Definitions
01a carriage for hire
n. a horse-drawn carriage or a taxi that you can pay to use.
n. a carriage or automobile kept for hire; the term survives in modern legal contexts as 'hackney carriage' to refer to licensed taxis.
“The city still issues licenses for every hackney carriage operating in the center.”
“The local authority maintains strict regulations regarding the age and condition of any vehicle seeking a hackney carriage license.”
British English · Formal · Technical
Usage
Often used in the compound 'hackney carriage' in UK licensing law.
02a horse for riding
n. a horse that is used for ordinary riding or for pulling a carriage.
n. an ordinary horse used for riding or driving, as opposed to a specialized war horse or farm horse.
“He rode a tired hackney along the dusty road to the next village.”
“The traveler exchanged his exhausted hackney for a fresh mount at the post house before continuing his journey across the moors.”
Archaic · Literary
03available for hire
adj. describes something, like a carriage, that is offered for rent.
adj. let out for hire; devoted to common use for a fee.
“They waited at the corner for a hackney coach to take them home.”
“The streets were crowded with hackney coaches and private broughams, creating a chaotic scene outside the theater.”
Archaic
Antonyms
04to make boring
v. to use something so often that it becomes uninteresting or unoriginal.
v. to make trite, vulgar, or commonplace by frequent use; to overexpose a concept or phrase.
“The plot of the movie was hackneyed and predictable from the start.”
“The author attempted to revitalize a theme that had been hackneyed by generations of lesser writers.”
Archaic · Literary
Teaching tip
Modern speakers almost exclusively use the past participle 'hackneyed' as an adjective rather than using 'hackney' as a verb.
Synonyms
Antonyms
Real-World Examples
“These are drive-by glances in a play that prefers to centre Monroe’s sex life, in the most hackneyed of ways.” “The NTA said it meant that 92 per cent of the country’s taxi, hackney and limousine fleet were checked while operating during the year.” Etymology
The senses "a horse" and "(a means of transport) available for hire" derive from the fact that many horses were kept for hire in the London borough of Hackney. The place name is from Old English *Hacan īeġ "Hacan's Isle" (or "Hook's Island"), referring to dry land in a marsh.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Scan code
englishreference.com/q/hackney