hackney

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.

noun

1. (archaic) 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. (archaic) A hired drudge; a hireling; a prostitute.
6. (archaic, uncountable) 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 bread. quoted in 1972, Pat Rogers, Grub Street: Studies in a Subculture (page 384)

adj

1. Offered for hire.
   hackney coaches
2. (figurative) 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.

verb

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.
   […] To her, who, frugal only that her thrift / May feed excesses she can ill afford, / Is hackneyed home unlackeyed; […] 1785, William Cowper, The Task