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Hack   Listen
verb
Hack  v. t.  
1.
To use as a hack; to let out for hire.
2.
To use frequently and indiscriminately, so as to render trite and commonplace. "The word "remarkable" has been so hacked of late."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Hack" Quotes from Famous Books



... him in a bare hall, holding his hat in one hand and touching his gold cross with the other; but she soon came hack, and a little warmth crept about his heart. How works of mercy suited women! She looked so different, so much softer, beneath the white coif, with a white apron over the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... thoughtfulness for others, had been considering what could be done to prevent Zoe from feeling lonely in Edward's absence. She saw the hack draw up at the door, and meeting the young girls on the threshold with a bright face and pleasant smile: "You have seen the boys off?" she said, half inquiringly. "The weather is so favorable, that I think they can hardly fail ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley

... mumbled Calavius, as he rocked and swayed. "Open the door and let them enter. I am an old man. My son is dead. What matters a few years of life? I pray to the gods that the barbarians may not hack me. You shall see how easy I will make it—if they have but a sharp sword." Suddenly he sprang to his feet and grasped Marcia's arm. "They will not scourge me? Surely they will not scourge me? I am a senator and the friend of ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne

... nearly a lifetime on one poem. It completely absorbed his life. It is said that Bryant rewrote "Thanatopsis" a hundred times, and even then was not satisfied with it. John Foster would sometimes linger a week over a single sentence. He would hack, split, prune, pull up by the roots, or practice any other severity on whatever he wrote, till it gained his consent to exist. Chalmers was once asked what Foster was about in London. "Hard at it," he replied, "at the rate of a line a week." Dickens, one of the greatest writers of modern ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden

... what Arnold? To say nothing of Mutius Scaevola minus a hand, General Knox a thumb, and Hannibal an eye; and that old Roman grenadier, Dentatus, nothing more than a bruised and battered trunk, a knotty sort of hemlock of a warrior, hard to hack and hew into chips, though much marred in symmetry by battle-ax blows. Ah! but these warriors, like anvils, will stand a deal of hard hammering. Especially in the old knight-errant times. For at the battle of Brevieux in Flanders, my glorious ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... trouble; you have to sit still and watch this wrecking of civilization or else get out and take a hack at the thing yourself. I can't do that; not unless I have to." He paused. "I've had a good time in this life; things have always ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... to go to the aid of those who were fighting, but it would have been utter madness to have attempted to land with a detachment in the dark and try to hack a way through the jungle. They might have fired signals and had them responded to, but it would have been a helpless, bewildering piece of folly; and with pulses beating rapidly with excitement, and ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn

... and, while in great poverty, won a prize of one hundred dollars from the Baltimore Saturday Visitor for his story, "The Manuscript Found in a Bottle." Through John P. Kennedy[1], one of the judges whose friendship the poverty-stricken author gained, he procured a good deal of hack work, and finally an editorial position on the Southern Literary Messenger, of Richmond. The salary was fair, and better was in sight; yet Poe was melancholy, dissatisfied, and miserable. He wrote a pitiable letter to Mr. Kennedy, asking to be convinced "that it ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill

... bones were clothed and breathed into by the actor's personality that the dramatizations lived. One can recall no plot that moves naturally in these versions; the transformation of the story into dialogue was mechanical, done by men to whom hack-work was the easiest thing in the world. Comparing the Kerr play with the Burke revision of it, when the text is strained for richness of phrase it might contain, only one line results, and is worth remembering; it ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Rip van - Winkle • Charles Burke

... knowledge. I wondered how he would die. He would be alone there, in the tangle, stumbling across creepers. The poisoned blow-pipe, from the long, polished blow-pipe, such as I had seen in the museums. He would fall on his face, among the jungle. Then the silent Indian would hack off his head with a flint, and pickle it for the Lima markets. He would never get to the Caqueta. Or perhaps he would be caught in an electric storm, an aire, as they call them, and be stricken down among the hills on his way to Chito. More probably he would die ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various

... such different ways. I don't know, but to me it has been all! There is no joy, no pleasure, however petty, through all the day, but it brings with it the swift desire to share it with you. Every morning I waken with your half-uttered name on my lips, as though, when I slipped hack through the portals of consciousness into the world of reality, I came only to find you, as a timid child awakes and calls feebly for its mother. Once, not long ago, in a street accident, such as you know of in our busy city, I seemed very close to death, and in an instant ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo

... a fool of me from the first moment; you have refused to hear my explanations; and now there is no power under God will make me stay here any longer; and if I cannot make my way out in a more decent fashion, I will hack your door in pieces ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson

... annoyed by the incident, and was afraid it would prejudice Kate's uncle—if he had returned—against her, or if he had not, that his wife would be vexed. Before the hack was out of sight, I was sorry I had not permitted Kate to go. I talked the matter over with her, and with her kind friends, who thought I had ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic

... fifteen hands three, full of breeding. I selected him for my mount, and determined to look after him myself. Cold work it was too in the early winter mornings to wash him down, groom him and keep the saddlery and accoutrements in order. I schooled him myself, and he promised to become a perfect hack and police horse. A police horse needs to be taught the best of manners. He must be thoroughly quiet, good tempered, and capable of being ridden in amongst a crowd without being frightened. I succeeded beyond my expectations in training him, and I was very pleased ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon

... small wood saw with fine teeth. A bit stock, or a ratchet drill, if you can afford it, with a variety of small drills; two wood chisels, say of 3/8-inch and 3/4-inch widths; small cold chisels; hack saw, 10-inch blade; small iron square; pair of dividers; tin shears; wire cutters; 2 pairs of pliers, one flat and the other round-nosed; 2 awls, centering punch, wire ...
— Electricity for Boys • J. S. Zerbe

... And this sensation of life returning to him really drove the fear of death away. Yanson opened his eyes, and then, his mind utterly confused, he slept soundly for the remainder of the night. He lay on his hack, with mouth open, and snored loudly, and between his lashes, which were not tightly closed, his flat, dead eyes, which were upturned so that the pupil did ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev

... been as yet reported. Was it not possible to intercept him? The Parthian king hastily sent out a body of horse, with orders to pursue the Syrian prince at their best speed, and endeavor to capture him before he passed the frontier. If they succeeded, they were to bring him hack to their master, who would probably have then committed his prisoner to close custody. The pursuit, however, failed. Demetrius had anticipated, or at least feared, a change of purpose, and, having prosecuted his journey with the greatest diligence, had reached ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson

... irritably. "Max had genius; I had—ability. That's different. One real success is better than two halves. Not"—he smiled down at her—"not that I minimize my usefulness. Somebody has to do the hack-work, and, if I do say it myself, I'm a ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... when this volume was on the eve of publication, it chanced that Mr. Warrington called in Paternoster Row to talk with Mr. Hack, Mr. Bacon's reader and general manager of publications—for Mr. Bacon, not having the least taste in poetry or in literature of any kind, wisely employed the services of a professional gentleman. Warrington, then, going into Mr. Hack's ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... impossible to him. He stands his ground, too, under any fire of cross-examination. The rattan would dislodge him, but unfortunately his guileless countenance too often shields him from this searching and wholesome instrument. When he is sent for a hack buggy and returns after half- an-hour, with a perplexed face, saying that there is not one to be had anywhere, who would suspect that he has been holding an auction at the nearest stand, dwelling on the liberality and wealth of his master and the distance ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA

... in Pennsylvania," rejoiced Lieutenant A. Aberlein of the Eighth Bavarian Army Corps. "Our men of softer spirit give the wounded a bullet of deliverance; the others hack ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett

... knew also that his mother's fortune should in equity have been divided among the family; but, as he pointed out to his dear old governor, a Carteret mustn't be allowed to starve; so the parson, who loved the handsome lad, put down his hack and sent the prodigal a remittance. He had better have sent him a hempen rope, for necessity might have made a man out of Master Dick; the remittance turned him into a ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell

... idle men, Webber never had a moment to spare. Except read, there was nothing he did not do; training a hack for a race in the Phoenix, arranging a rowing-match, getting up a mock duel between two white-feather acquaintances, were his almost daily avocations. Besides that, he was at the head of many organized ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... smash: but you can't get any more oil; we can't allow you to lick up any of that which is running over your little neighbour there—that is for the pigs, and for us." Is not this amazing folly? Or again, suppose we were to take a race-horse, a dray-horse, a farmer's horse, a broken-down hack, and a Shetland horse—for these more nearly resemble the various classes of convicts—and say to them, "Horses, you have all offended the laws of horsedom, and stand fully convicted of clover stealing. ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous

... were proceeding north of the town, the battle opened on Saturday, May 15, 1915, in the south, against the Russian front between Novemiasto and Sambor. Here the Austro-German troops were thrown against Hussakow and Krukenice to hack their way through trenches and barbed-wire entanglements in order to reach the Przemysl-Lemberg railway and thereby complete the circle. "At the cost of enormous sacrifices the enemy succeeded in capturing the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan

... pitiful death, caused by your absence, but, be that as it may, you are the only living person I will obey, and I prefer rather to obey you and die, than live for ever and disobey you. My body is yours. Cut it, hack it, do what you like ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various

... Hack and cut your collops well; season with pepper and salt, and fry them quick of a pale colour in a little bit of butter. Squeeze in a lemon: put in half a pint of cream and the yolks of four eggs. Toss them up quick, and serve ...
— The Lady's Own Cookery Book, and New Dinner-Table Directory; • Charlotte Campbell Bury

... which the evil spirits use for fetching wood and water. That horse is your father. When he came out of the kabak drunk, and fell into the water, the devils immediately seized him and made him their hack, and now they use him for ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston

... Hope, hack journalist, long familiar with the genus Printer's Devil, small white faces, tangled hair, dirty hands, and greasy caps were common objects in the neighbourhood of that buried rivulet, the Fleet. But this was a new species. Peter Hope sought his spectacles, ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome

... to St. James The axe that he whetted to hack us; He must play at some lustier games Or at sea he can hope to out-thwack us; To his mines of Peru he would pack us To tug at his bullet and chain; Alas! that his Greatness should lack us!— But where ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various

... Wentworth and Lois entered their carriage, a gentleman was helping some one into a hack just behind Mrs. Wentworth's carriage. The light fell on them at the moment that Lois stepped forward, and she recognized Mr. Keith and the dancer, Mile. Terpsichore. He was handing her in with all the deference that he would have shown ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page

... She and Ann had been gathering roses together in the Priory garden, and, in straining up to reach a particularly lovely bloom that hung from the roof of the pergola, Cara's thin muslin sleeve had caught on a projecting nail which had ripped it apart from shoulder to elbow. As the torn sleeve fell hack it revealed a trickle of blood where the nail's sharp point had scored the skin, and above that, marring the whiteness of the upper arm, an ugly, discoloured scar. Cara made a hasty movement to conceal it, catching the gaping edges of the sleeve together with her hand. Then, realising that it ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler

... Then there is shaving. I have to get shaved because Euphemia hates me with a blue jowl, and I will admit I hate myself. Yet, if I were left alone, I do not think my personal taste would affect my decision; I will say that for myself. Either I hack about with a blunt razor—my razors are always blunt—until I am a kind of Whitechapel Horror, and with hair in tufts upon my chin like the top of a Bosjesman's head, or else I have to spend all the morning being dabbed about the face by a barber with damp hands. In either case ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells

... turned us away. Then our people, except those who went to the Second Mesa, traveled to the northeast as far as the Tsegi (Canyon de Chelly), but I can not tell whether our people built the louses there. Then they came hack to this region again and built houses and had much trouble with the Walpi, but we ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff

... was approaching, and the next moment the whole place was echoing with triumphant yells, as the pursuing Rangers were met by a compact force outnumbering them by four to one, who sprang furiously upon them, trying to hack them ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green

... I suspect I know a thing or two of Italy—more than Lady Morgan has picked up in her posting. What do Englishmen know of Italians beyond their museums and saloons—and some hack * *, en passant? Now, I have lived in the heart of their houses, in parts of Italy freshest and least influenced by strangers,—have seen and become (pars magna fui) a portion of their hopes, and fears, and passions, and am almost inoculated ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... gentleman hops the left foot well forward, then hack; and glissades half round. He then hops the right foot forward and back, and glissades the other half round. The lady performs the same steps, beginning with the ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... he was preparing to rid himself of Ruthven for another reason. But he was not yet quite ready to spurn Ruthven, because he wanted a little more out of him—just enough to place himself on a secure footing among those of the younger set where Ruthven, as hack cotillon leader, was regarded by the ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers

... an innocent and innocuous weapon, but two table knives are not, for one can be used against the other so skillfully as to form a fairly good hack saw, with which prison bars may be sawed. The sawing of steel bars was the sound that the sentry had heard ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson

... even the pettiest foreign princelets invited for the occasion, were driving about the streets and parks in royal equipages, the kaiser's sister and brother-in-law had to content themselves with the dingiest of hack cabs, and also with the role of ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy

... or magazine stories alone, as the young daughter of toil too soon found out. Like other writers I did hack work. My main dependence was on that venerable and useful form of it which consists in making Sunday-school books. Of these I must have written over a dozen; I wince, sometimes, when I see their forgotten dates and titles ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various

... public grant the cause of exploration. They usually kept somebody in the field, whose discoveries were intended to throw light on the caprices of Lake Torrens, at one time a vast inland sea, at another a dry desert of stones and baked mud. Hack, Warburton, Freeling, Babbage, and other well-known names, are associated with this particular district, and, in 1858, Stuart started to the north-west of the same country, accompanied by one white man (Forster) and a native. In this, ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart

... descended from the El Tovar hack which had brought him from the station to that hotel the first person he saw standing upon the porch was Valencia Valdes. He could hardly believe his eyes, for of course she could not be here. He had left her at Corbett's, had taken the stage and the train, and now found her waiting for him. ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine

... and breathed more easily. She had both loosed him and shackled him. What a procession of golden days she made him see, if only as a mirage. Freedom? If only he could return to that little office and drudge for her unceasingly—toil and hack and hew at stubborn fortune merely in the consciousness that she was somewhere in the world, that would be freedom. He knew it now as she walked close beside him like a beautiful dream. There was no use longer in parrying or feinting. The brush of her sleeve made him dizzy; the sound of her voice ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... passed down the gravel walk, a hack drew up and stopped in front of the house. Louis Arnold sprang out. The two men ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf

... moment. "You have judged hastily, and consequently have misjudged. If you were to ask me whether I think Miss Kingsley's present occupation is proportionate to her abilities, I should answer 'no.' She would herself admit that it was hack-work,—though, mind you, even hack-work can be redeemed by an artistic spirit, as she has so adequately explained to you. All young women have not independent fortunes, and such as are without means are obliged to take whatever they can find to do in the line of their professions. ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant

... and their awkwardness of shape and bulk that at the final moment, after I had painfully strained my arms in an effort to raise the largest pack to my back, and after I had been repeatedly tripped by the handle of my woodsman's axe, which I wore in my belt, I suffered Mrs. Dorcas to summon a hired hack or conveyance. Seated on the rear seat of this vehicle, carrying some of my equipage in my lap and having the rest piled about me, I ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... men, handsomely dressed and apparently possessed of larger means than the great majority of the passengers, got out of a hack and paused close to where Joe ...
— Joe's Luck - Always Wide Awake • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... of the slums in the neighbourhood of Oxford Street, some years ago, and always fond of horse-flesh (I had driven—as a boy—a bathing-machine for my pleasure along the wild coast line of the great Congo Continent) was greatly attracted by a hack standing within the shafts of a cart belonging to a funeral furnisher. Like many of its class, the horse was jet black, with a long flowing tail and a mane to match. As I gazed upon the creature the driver came out of the shop (to which doleful establishment the equipage ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 27, 1890 • Various

... thump at the feet of the public, and has never been picked up. A few persons turned over one or two of the leaves, as it lay there, and essayed to kick the volume deeper into the mud; for they were the hack critics of the minor periodical press in London, than whom, I suppose, though excellent fellows in their way, there are no gentlemen in the world less sensible of any sanctity in a book, or less likely ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Colleen, they are the children of the fiend, And they have power until the end of Time, When God shall fight with them a great pitched battle And hack them into pieces." ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley

... as if of its clan. They do not care so much for wealth as townsfolk and the middle class do; they have a pity, but a respectful one, for well-born poverty. And then this Roland, too,—who would go and dine in a cookshop, and receive change for a shilling, and shun the ruinous luxury of a hack cabriolet,—could be positively extravagant in his liberalities to those around him. He was altogether another being in his paternal acres. The shabby-genteel, half-pay captain, lost in the whirl of London, here luxuriated into a dignified ease of manner that Chesterfield ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... such a noodle as to build his back-door right down in the water," he said, "unless he meant the place for a bath. No; we shall find that doorway out in the wood somewhere, you mark my words, Scar. I dare say, if we were to take billhooks and cut and hack away the branches, we ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn

... vehicle was at the door; it was a hack conveyance which was elevated to the rank of a private carriage in honor of the occasion, but, in spite of its humble exterior, the young men would have thought themselves happy to have secured it for the last three days of the Carnival. "Excellency," cried the cicerone, seeing Franz approach ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... I become a great dramatist, like Shakespeare and Bernard Shaw and all those chaps, or merely turn out hack plays?..." ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine

... carried hack to that grand vision of the prophet who saw the bones lying, very many and very dry, sapless and disintegrated, a heap dead and ready to rot. The question comes to him: 'Son of man! Can these bones live?' The only possible answer, if he consult experience, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... quiet and deserted. A single hack rattled under his window, and Arthur could hear its lessening sound until it was lost in the sweet clangor of the bells. He lay in bed, and did not see the people in the street; but he heard the shuffling ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis

... to a blaze of fire from the whole side of the hill, up which they were attempting to climb. Still, urged on by their leaders, they mounted higher and higher, in spite of the many who fell, till they reached the stockades. Some of the more daring, attempting to hack at the English with their tomahawks, were pierced with pikes and swords wielded by the stout aims of Rolfe, Roger Layton, the Audleys, and Fenton; while their men kept firing away as rapidly as they could reload their weapons. The Indians fought bravely, but unprepared for so determined a resistance, ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston

... was licked. Most losers will odd things along till they sound even. I heard a lovely excuse down in Red Gap. Hyman Leftowitz, who does business there as Abercrombie, the Quality Tailor, made a suit for Eddie Pierce that drives the depot hack, and Eddie was slow pay. So Hyman lost his native tact one night and dunned Eddie when he was walking down Fourth Street with his girl. Eddie left his girl in at the Owl Drug Store and went back and used Hyman hard; and all Hyman did was to yell 'Help!' and 'Murder!' I was in ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson

... indulgent to the foibles of the fair, been resorted to on the occasion, but even Mars seemed ready to enter upon the tapis, if Hymen had not intervened. There was, de par le monde, a certain brother of the lady—an officer—and, as it happened, on leave of absence,—who alighted from a hack-chaise at the Fox Hotel, at eleven o'clock at night, holding in his hand a slip of well-dried oak, accompanied by another gentleman, who, like himself, wore a military travelling-cap and a black stock; out of the said chaise, as was reported by the trusty Toby, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... scenes, he shortened the monologues, he suppressed or reduced the chorus—in a word, the drama in his hands ceased to be oratorical or lyrical, and became at length dramatic. The advance was great; and it was achieved by a hack playwright scrambling for his crusts ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden

... excited, and blazed away three shots into the helpless beast. 'Many hands make light work,' so the crowd soon had the dead animal extricated, rolled him into the creek, and floated him down to the village, where we found them already beginning to hack and hew the flesh, completely spoiling the skin, and properly completing the butchery. We were terribly vexed that we were too late, but endeavoured to stop the stupid destruction that was going on. The body measured eleven feet three inches from the snout ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... up as they stopped, and to him Peggy entrusted the machine. Followed by Wandering William she darted off across the plaza and made for a cab stand immediately across it and just outside the depot. As she rushed up to the solitary rickety hack that was standing there and was about to step in a tall figure came rushing out of the station. The train had just pulled in, and long before its wheels had stopped revolving he had leaped ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham

... excellent cutting qualities can be made easily from a discarded hack-saw blade. The dimensions given in the sketch make a knife of ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... they dig the plains Seeking for hidden fountains, not with spade And mattock only searching out the depths, But with the sword; they hack the stony heights, In shafts that reach the level of the plain. No further flees from light the pallid wretch Who tears the bowels of the earth for gold. Yet neither riven stones revealed a spring, Nor streamlet whispered from its hidden source; To water trickled on the gravel bed, ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan

... with this view a considerable number of barbs had lately been brought into the country. Two men whose authority on such subjects was held in great esteem, the Duke of Newcastle and Sir John Fenwick, pronounced that the meanest hack ever imported from Tangier would produce a diner progeny than could be expected from the best sire of our native breed. They would not readily have believed that a time would come when the princes and nobles of neighbouring lands would ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... human companionship and come out to cavort in the bright lights for a while, I may pass you on a street somewhere. This world is very small. Oh, yes—when you get to Vancouver go to the Ladysmith. It's a nice, quiet hotel in the West End. Any hack driver ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... more than fifty yards when he halted sharply. With a crack like thunder, a cleft had opened at his very feet—a rift ten feet deep in places, apparently bottomless in others, and very long. Not wanting to go around it, he slid down one side and, with an ice pick, started to hack a foothold ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various

... This hack-work was done by Scott without enthusiasm, to earn money for his investment in real estate, and is not of transcendent merit. Obscurer men than he had performed such literary drudgery with more ability, but no writer was ever more industrious. The amount of work which ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... [Hack Latin, of course, but then, you know, if one does quote Latin, that is the only sort that can be understood ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille

... where, as usual, a vast concourse of people, of both sexes and all ages, were congregated. After a few moments spent in preliminary arrangements, the prisoner was escorted, under guard, to the gallows. While seated in the hack awaiting the perfection of the arrangements for his execution, he conversed freely with the utmost nonchalance with Dr. Burrows, frequently smiling at some remark made either by himself ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens

... shame! Built to achieve a higher aim, We honest Huns can't play the game Of shifty propaganders; Henceforth we'd better all get back On to the straight and righteous track And help our HINDENBURG to hack (If not too late) ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 17, 1917 • Various

... blade, Toledo trusty, For want of fighting has grown rusty, And eats into itself for lack Of somebody to hew and hack." ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various

... the bone about half an inch thick, then hack it with the back of a knife, salt it, and broil it on the embers on a soft fire the space of an hour; being finely broil'd, serve it with gravy sauce, ...
— The accomplisht cook - or, The art & mystery of cookery • Robert May

... German retainers seized him, and sat him by force on the executioner's most miserable hack; struck him in the face so that the blood streamed down, placed a tarred straw crown on his head, and fastened a paper with derisive words, on the saddle before him. They then let a row of hired beggar-boys and old fish-wives go in couples ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen

... are asleep on closed carriages at the hack stand. Long lines of clumsy carts, with high wheels, rumble over the cobblestone ...
— A Little Journey to Puerto Rico - For Intermediate and Upper Grades • Marian M. George

... Abbe Prevost, his slightly younger contemporary, received but little credit in his lifetime for the Manon Lescaut that posterity was to prize. Throughout the eighteenth century, he was chiefly regarded as a literary hack who had translated Richardson's Pamela and done things of a similar kind to earn his livelihood. Rousseau too was esteemed less for his Nouvelle Heloise than for his political disquisitions. No novelist since 1635 had ever been elected to the French Academy on account of his stories. ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton

... the songs are simply ADMIRABLE! and I have no doubt of this being a popular feature in "All the Year Round." I would not omit the sexton, and I would not omit the spinners and weavers; and I would omit the hack-writers, and (I think) the alderman; but I am not so clear about the chorister. The pastoral I a little doubt finding audience for; but I am not at all sure yet that ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens

... pleasure to see them prancing, to the number of forty, round the Duchess's carriage, with their captain and lieutenant riding at each door, all dressed alike, in white, in the full Cauchoise costume, chignon and cap with lace lappets, each on her pacing hack, which she managed to perfection. When a halt was made, the squadron dismounted, each girl holding her horse—a most charming effect it made in the Norman landscape. I never heard where the guard was quartered, but I am quite convinced ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville

... established, and the principles of salvation subscribed unto by all. There remain not many controversies worthy a passion, and yet never any dispute without, not only in divinity but inferior arts. What a [Greek omitted] and hot skirmish is betwixt S. and T. in Lucian! How do grammarians hack and slash for the genitive case in Jupiter! How do they break their own pates, to salve that of Priscian! "Si foret in terris, rideret Democritus." Yes, even amongst wiser militants, how many wounds have been given and credits slain, ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne

... acquaintance with my English brethren; for, much to my astonishment, I found quite a crowd on the wharf, and we walked up to our carriage through a long lane of people, bowing, and looking very glad to see us. When I came to get into the hack it was surrounded by more faces than I could count. They stood very quietly, and looked very kindly, though evidently very much determined to look. Something prevented the hack from moving on; so the interview ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe

... reflections he went down with George to the little saloon. The skipper, who left him there a few minutes, came hack with an armful of feminine apparel. They had no great difficulty in tying on the big hat with the veil, but when Nasmyth had stripped his jacket off there was some trouble over the next proceeding. Indeed, Derrick did not feel quite comfortable about appropriating Miss Hamilton's garments, ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss

... saw them step to the front of the hut, which in no wise excited their curiosity; but they stopped short for a few minutes, just long enough for one of them to climb one of the cocoanut trees and hack off a couple of the great husks, to fall with heavy thuds, before the climber slipped to earth again, when both set to work hacking off the husk and cutting away one end of the ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn

... have become a "political hack." Finding it would not interfere much with my law, I accepted the nomination to the Assembly and was elected by 1500 majority, leading the ticket by 600 votes. But don't think I am going to go into politics after this ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... humanity to animals is one of the best traits of a great people, and they justly thank God they are not as others are. Can anything more horrid be imagined than to kill a horse in the bull-ring, and can any decent hack ask for a better end when he is broken down, than to be driven to death in London streets or to stand for hours on cab ranks in the rain and snow of an English winter? The Spaniards are certainly cruel to animals; on the other ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham

... not quite correct. I was formally presented to Miss Graham in England some time ago. However, as I saw a car coming along St. Catharine's while your maid was looking for a hack, and there was no time to explain, I scribbled a note on a bit of a letter and gave it to a boy to deliver to Miss Graham, and then I took the cat to ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss

... the squaw-axe and hack out a place fer a bed-ground and you can hunt up some firewood and take a bucket out of the pack and go to the crick and locate some water while I'm finding a place to picket ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart

... power for electricity to that for heat, is very remarkable, and seems to imply a natural dependence of the two. As the solid becomes a fluid, it loses almost entirely the power of conduction for heat, but gains in a high degree that for electricity; but as it reverts hack to the solid state, it gains the power of conducting heat, and loses that of conducting electricity. If, therefore, the properties are not incompatible, still they are most strongly contrasted, one being lost as the other is gained. We may hope, perhaps, hereafter to understand ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday

... those men rarely seen in the saddle or on the box, but who, nevertheless, always seem to have a horse to dispose of, whatever be the kind required. Hack, hunter, pony, phaeton-horse, he was either possessor of the very animal you wanted, or could suit you with it at twenty-four hours' notice; yet if you met him by accident riding in the Park, he was sure to tell you he had been mounted by a friend; if ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville

... evening he was already in front of the Countess's house. The weather was terrible; the wind blew with great violence, the sleety snow fell in large flakes, the lamps emitted a feeble light, the streets were deserted; from time to time a sledge drawn by a sorry-looking hack, passed by on the lookout for a belated passenger. Hermann was enveloped in a thick overcoat, and ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne

... I be back soon?" he said, turning upon her. But then he remembered that she had been one of those who were true to him, and he took her hand and was gracious to her. "I will be hack soon, Mrs. Bunce, and you need fear nothing. But recollect how little I have had of liberty lately. I have not even had a walk for six weeks. You cannot wonder that I should wish to roam about a little." Nevertheless ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope

... the hotel, carpet-bag in hand, he chanced to meet Maurice, just before he took a hack to the depot. An idea flashed upon him that Maurice might be useful to him as a spy upon his nephew, and might be engaged to watch and give him timely notice of his movements. He therefore paused, and Maurice perceived that he ...
— Tom, The Bootblack - or, The Road to Success • Horatio Alger

... creative and the critical spirit. A great poet, we can learn from Goethe and Coleridge, may also be a great critic. More than that: without some touch of poetry in himself, no man can hope to do more than hack-work as a critic of others. Yet it may safely be said that, if no critical tradition exists in a nation, it is not an age of passionate creation, such as was that of Marlowe and Shakespeare, that will found it. With all their alertness, with all their wide outlook, with all their zeal for classical ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... got home and stacked in ricks; men who, if you lead them on, will talk of the cows they themselves watched over on the heath—two from this cottage, three from that one yonder, one more from Master Hack's, another couple from Trusler's, until they have numbered a score, perhaps, and have named a dozen old village names. It all actually happened. The whole system was "in full swing" here, within living memory. But the very heart of ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt

... uttered a peculiar cry, resembling the hooting of an owl. At this sound, and as if by magic, a couple of steeds, accompanied by the two hounds, started from the brake. In an instant the demon huntsman vaulted upon the hack of the horse nearest to him, and the keeper almost as quickly mounted the other. The pair then galloped off through the glen, the owl flying before them, and the ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth

... Shades,—good listeners and bad liquor; but the trooper who has tasted every tipple, from "pine-top" to mescal, will forgive the latter if sure of the former. Donnelly had his "ordhers," as Mrs. Mac said. The sergeant was to be accorded all respect and credit, and a hack to fetch him home when his legs got as twisted as his tongue: Mrs. McGrath would be around within forty-eight hours to audit and pay the accounts. Donnelly sought to swindle the shrewd old laundress at the start, ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King

... was like the roar of a wild beast the man sprung hack. The next instant, with a horrible oath, he had seized the young man and torn him out of ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming

... Pere Piquedent and I should set out in a hack for the ferry of Queue de Vache, that we should there pick up Angele, and that I should take them into my boat, for in those days I was fond of boating. I would then bring them to the Ile des Fleurs, where the three of us would dine. I had inflicted myself on them, the better to ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... address so dumbfoundered the peasants, that they retreated by degrees further and further from their intended victim, who, like a shrewd fellow, seized his opportunity, and made his escape. He was not long in harnessing his hack, mounting his cart, and driving from the inhospitable spot. The words of the miller had made a deep impression on his mind. The wish to hold communion by any means with the world of spirits, which had been closed upon him from the moment that he had hurled his curse against one of them—grew strong ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various

... absolution for the phrase: a jury of men during the late war, on very thin patriotic grounds, jailed the author of it) if she favours her lord with viable issue. One result is the notorious villainousness of American cookery—a villainousness so painful to a cultured uvula that a French hack-driver, if his wife set its masterpieces before him, would brain her with his linoleum hat. To encounter a decent meal in an American home of the middle class, simple, sensibly chosen and competently cooked, becomes almost as startling as to ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken

... angry, menacing growl, the mountaineer threw himself on his hack, hoping thereby to free ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Rockies • Frank Gee Patchin

... I have you now, you cursed young white-gill!" cried he. "Break it in, my boys, smash, hack. We'll roast him in place of his parchments—the man who will make ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall

... himself altogether to this mysticism" (Pierre could not tolerate mysticism in anyone now). "He seeks only for peace, and only these people sans foi ni loi * can give it him—people who recklessly hack at and strangle everything—Magnitski, Arakcheev, and tutti quanti.... You will agree that if you did not look after your estates yourself but only wanted a quiet life, the harsher your steward was the more readily your object might be attained," ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... breakfast of chocolate and rolls and Rillet de Tours, which the butler had just brought; and afterward brushed his teeth, finished dressing, and ordered Benton to call a fiacre. But finding his mother's victoria at the door he dismissed the hack, and talked stable matters with Cunningham, the coachman, and Fontenoy, the tiger, until his mother came—one of these lovely, trailing visions that are rare even in Paris, though common enough, I dare ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... sight of his wife, he hastened to remove his hat and salute her. But few of the deputies followed the royal example, and silently, without any salutation, without any cries of acclamation, they looked up at the queen. Marie Antoinette turned pale, and stepped hack with her ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach

... of sight; first she assured herself of that. Then she called a hack, and ordered it to be driven to a distant quarter ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various

... spreads downwards through all classes, from the Queen to the costermonger. London is like a shelled corn-cob on the Derby day, and there is not a clerk who could raise the money to hire a saddle with an old hack under it that can sit down on his office-stool the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... in his company. It was then taken for a mere frolic, and so passed accordingly; but afterwards, when the treason was discovered, such as remembered his gestures thought he practised what he intended to do when the plot should take effect; that is, to hack and hew, kill and destroy, all eminent persons of a different religion from himself."—CAULFIELD's History of the ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott

... signalize their courage, which was to go and sell oranges in the very playhouse, in the sight of the duchess and the whole court. The proposal being worthy of the sentiments of the one, and of the vivacity of the other, they immediately alighted, paid off their hack, and, running through the midst of an immense number of coaches, with great difficulty they reached the playhouse door. Sidney, more handsome than the beautiful Adonis, and dressed more gay than usual, alighted just then ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton

... society. His father had been a small tradesman in Devonshire. The son being clever and—and—handsome, made his way a little in the world. He became a journalist: he wrote for magazines and newspapers and reviews: he was what is called a literary hack. He had no certain prospects, no certain income, when he married me. I think," said Lady Alice, with a sort of cold scorn, which was intensified by the very softness of her tones, "that he could not have done ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... him with pride—as belonging exclusively to England. His originality is of English growth; his satire broad, bold, fair-play English. He was no screened assassin of character, either with pen or pencil; no journalist's hack to stab in secret—concealing his name, or assuming a forged one; no masked caricaturist, responsible to none. His philosophy was of the straightforward, clear-sighted English school; his theories—stern, simple, and unadorned—thoroughly English; his determination—proved ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... that you can speak so comfortably of your own health and looks, though I can scarcely comprehend the latter being really approved. Could travelling fifty miles produce such an immediate change? You were looking very poorly here, and everybody seemed sensible of it. Is there a charm in a hack postchaise? But if there were, Mrs. Craven's carriage might have undone it all. I am much obliged to you for the time and trouble you have bestowed on Mary's cap, and am glad it pleases her; but it will prove a useless gift at ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh

... Newcastle would receive him, and take his part, stole away from Bamburgh by sea, and reached Tynemouth. On proceeding to Newcastle, however, he found he had been mistaken, and hurriedly fled hack to Tynemouth, pursued by his enemies. He held out against them for a day or two, but was then captured and taken to Durham. Meanwhile the high-spirited Countess held Bamburgh against all assailants; but Mowbray's capture gave Rufus an advantage he was not slow to use. Returning to the North, he ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry

... making every other preparation for an absence of seven months from even the outskirts of civilization. On the morning of December 13th, when we went on board at daybreak, it was raining hard. We set sail and it came on to blow. Our boat was lost astern, our sails damaged, and the evening found us hack again in Macassar harbour. We remained there four days longer, owing to its raining all the time, thus rendering it impossible to dry and repair the huge mat sails. All these dreary days I remained ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... day and night, we reached Frederick, Maryland. There we were told that we could take rail-cars to Baltimore, and thence to Washington; but there was also a two-horse hack ready to start for Washington direct. Not having full faith in the novel and dangerous railroad, I stuck to the coach, and in the night reached Gadsby's Hotel in ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... the mountains, and our brief wedding-journey had become a thing of the past. Mrs. Pinkerton's iron-bound trunk had been reluctantly deposited in her bed-chamber by a puffing and surly hack-driver; and here was I, installed in the little cottage as head of the household, for weal or for woe. It was Mrs. Pinkerton's cottage, to be sure, but I entered it with the determination not to live there as a boarder or as a guest subject to the ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous

... what fools love makes of men! I have seen this very lad dash through the ranks Of hostile spearmen, cut and hack and thrust As in sheer sport. There will be blood shed, surely, Unless these dogs have lost their knack of war As he has; but we have them unprepared, And shall prevail, and thou shalt be avenged My father slain, and thou, ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris

... too, that I've refused to give the matter much thought. I tell you what I'll do. Let's you and I start on our first travel trip, right now! Let's start looking for God, together. He's there all right, my child. But you and I don't seem to be able to use the ordinary paths to get to Him. So we'll hack out our own trail, eh? And you'll tell me what your progress is—and where you get lost—and I'll tell you. It may take us years, but we'll get there, by heck! ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow

... sailed out of the mangrove swamp at me. At least a dozen were sticking into me. I started to run, but tripped over one that was fast in my calf and went down. The woolly heads made a run for me, each with a long-handled, fantail tomahawk with which to hack off my head. They were so eager for the prize that they got in one another's way. In the confusion I avoided several hacks by throwing myself right and left on the sand. Then Otoo arrived—Otoo the man-handler. In some way he had got hold of a heavy war-club, ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... less favored mortals, like tales of Bacchus conquering in the East; they excited our ambition, but not our jealousy; for the superiority of Harmodius was acknowledged by us all, and we never thought of a rivalry with him. No man ever cantered a hack through the Champs Elysees with such elegant assurance; no man ever made such a massacre of dolls at the shooting-gallery; or won you a rubber at billiards with more easy grace; or thundered out a couplet out of Beranger with such a roaring ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... go hack to those musty old times! Now think of that article of Milvain's. If only you could do something of that kind! What do people care about Diogenes and his tub ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing

... escape the fame rightfully yours. You are a public figure now and must stand in the light. Would it not be preferable, mam, to talk as lady to gentleman (I am related to the Taliaferros of Ruffin County on the distaff side) than to be badgered by some hack journalist?" ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... material for the theatre. The influence of Marlowe and particularly of Kyd, whose Spanish Tragedy with its crude mechanism of ghosts and madness and revenge caught the popular taste, worked itself out in a score of journeymen dramatists, mere hack writers, who turned their hand to plays as the hacks of to-day turn their hand to novels, and with no more literary merit than that caught as an echo from better men than themselves. One of the worst of these—he is also one of the most typical—was John Marston, a purveyor of tragic gloom and ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair

... from the station, but, before the dusty hired hack had rattled along for five minutes, the children began to put their heads out of the carriage window and say, "Aren't we nearly there?" And every time they passed a house, which was not very often, they ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit

... take four of us in his carriage to wait upon His Majesty, because my own carriage is not forthcoming." It appears there had been a difference on the last drawing-room day. Hence the degradation which the Colonel had almost suffered, of being obliged to enter the presence of his Sovereign in a hack cab. ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray



Words linked to "Hack" :   fleet, tool, slogger, programme, nag, Equus caballus, cut up, grapple, politico, cab, car, redact, machine politician, whoop, political hack, writer, foul, Grub Street, horse, ax, cut, cough, automobile, hack-driver, make do, rugger, mount, cope, hack saw, political leader, literary hack, minicab, unskilled person, contend, hoops, pol



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