Hackney

The common noun (and adjective) 'a hackney', sometimes shortened to hack, has several meanings, all of which are derived from the first, 'a horse used for everyday riding'. A verb developed from the noun may be of more interest to the average reader of AWE. There is also a proper noun, which probably has nothing to do withj the common noun.

• The hackney was first a horse, in the days when horses were the most common form of personal transport..
  • It was specifically a horse used for ordinary riding - the sort of horse on which a knight might have jogged towards a tournament, or, in later times, a hunter might have ridden to a meet. In both cases, a more valuable and specialist horse would be led to the event by a servant, the destrier or charger for the tournament, a hunter for the other.
  • The ordinariness of this led to the practice of hiring out horses for some ordinary journey, so a hackney stable was one that kept horses for hire.
    • By extension, hackney became an adjective meaning 'for hire'. This can be seen in such combinations as hackney-cab, a legalistic and bureaucratic name for a taxi (in earlier times a hackney carriage or hackney coach; and even earlier, a hackney-chair - a form of transport in which two men carried a traveller in a chair fitted with poles). A taxi is also known as a hansom cab.
  • Figuratively, hackney' was applied to any over-worked person, or drudge.

• The proper noun Hackney is the name of a district of London. It is recorded in 1198 as Hakeneia. It appears to mean 'an islandbelonging to a man called Haca’, or 'an island shaped like a hook'. The 'island' may simply be a patch of drier ground in the middle of a marsh.