1754. Fielding, Jonathan Wild, iv., 14. With wonderful alacrity he had ended almost in an instant, and conveyed himself into a place of safety in a hackney-coach.
1785. Grose, Vulg. Tongue, s.v. Hackney-writer, one who writes for attornies or booksellers.
1803. Gradus ad Cantabrigiam. Hacks. Hack Preachers; the common exhibitioners at St. Mary’s, employed in the service of defaulters, and absentees.
1819. Moore, Tom Crib. I first was hired to peg a hack.
1823. Moncrieff, Tom and Jerry, i., 7. A rattler is a rumbler, otherwise a Jarvy! Better known, perhaps, by the name of a hack.
1841. Leman Rede, Sixteen String Jack, ii., 3. I’ll get a hack, be off in a crack.
Verb (colloquial, football).—To kick shins. Hacking = the practice of kicking shins at football.
1857. G. A. Lawrence, Guy Livingstone, ch. i. I saw, too, more than one player limp out of his path disconsolately, trying vainly to dissemble the pain of a vicious hack.
1869. Spencer, Study of Sociology, ch. viii. p. 186 (9th ed.). And thus, perhaps, the ‘education of a gentleman’ may rightly include giving and receiving hacking of the shins at foot-ball.
1872. The Echo, 3 Nov. Some of the modern foot ball players have the tips of their shoes tipped with iron, and others wear a kind of armour or iron plate under their knicker-bockers to avoid … what is called hacking.