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hack

Noun
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A hired horse or carriage used for ordinary transport; in literature, 'hack' often implies a mundane, workaday existence, and its use in poetry can evoke a sense of drudgery or the everyday, contrasting with more romantic steeds.

Detailed Definition
In older English, a hack was a horse kept for hire, and by extension a hackney coach was a public carriage for rent. In this poem, the coachman says he drives a “good hack,” meaning the horse or carriage he works with.
Example
Example in poetry:
“I am a bold Coachman, and drive a good hack” uses hack for an ordinary horse hired or used for riding; In nineteenth-century city verse, “the hack clattered through the rain” may mean a carriage horse; “The old hack lowered his patient head” gives the animal dignity despite the term’s workaday sense; Modern readers should distinguish horse hack from hack meaning an unoriginal writer or journalist
Additional Notes
The word “hack” in the quoted line is a specialized older transport term, not the modern everyday sense of the word.; Found in the poem, The Hackney Coachman by Hannah More
Also Known As
hackney scribbler quill-pusher penman
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