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I'm hearing people use "hack" to mean many things that I do not understand. Could someone please explain how one might "hack" a shirt collar, or a waste basket, etc? | ||
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Cut them to pieces? | |||
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| Junior Member |
Destroy them like in to hack ones hair means to cut it drastically. | |||
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Possibly they mean that they are using makeshift materials to produce something? For instance, perhaps someone could make a shirt collar out of cardboard or a waste basket out of a large (opened and emptied) can of beans? Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life. | |||
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I think it's an extension of the computer term. Like you hack a computer to make it do something you want, you could hack a shirt collar to make it keep its shape. | |||
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I think it means to butcher or mutilate something by cutting, as Kalleh and angry and bitter have indicated. I think the computer meaning derives from this. Here's a definition from AH
And here's one from the OED Online
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From the context of its use when I've heard it, it seems akin to "re-purpose" rather than mutilate. Here's an example: http://www.buzzfeed.com/natali...ould-know#.jlbmODDKV How long, do you suppose, before the expression becomes hackneyed? | |||
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That sounds like "Hints from Heloise." | |||
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The wird hack has many meanings in techie jargon (see the jargon File entry.) It is thought by some to be from the Yiddish verb hakn 'chop, hew, mince, slash', hak 'axe'. —Ceci n'est pas un seing. | |||
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Good to see you again, Z! I had never even remotely considered a Yiddish connection! | |||
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So, I guessed correctly. It would have been useful to have had that link to Buzzfeed in the OP.  Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life. | |||
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I hadn't found it when I posted originally. | |||
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The OED has this etymology for the verb "hack," meaning "To cut with heavy blows in an irregular or random fashion.": It has this citation from 1200: " Trin. Coll. Hom. 139 A maiden bad te kinge his heued, and he hit bad of acken." | |||
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I assume cognate with English hack "A tool or implement for breaking or chopping up." The OED says the verb is from Middle English hacken from Old English *haccian | |||
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What does one do when one "hires a hack?" I know this meaning derives from the English city of Hackney, and refers to a taxicab, but does the city's name derive from "haccian?" BTW, I haven't heard anyone using "hack" to mean a taxi in a long time. Is it still common in the UK? | |||
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A hack is (or was) a horse. The Oxford dictionary says, as you surmised, that it probably comes from the town of Hackney, to the east of London, where horses were pastured. A hackney cab or hackney coach is a horse-drawn vehicle. Apart from rare uses in ceremonies, re-enactments and the like we mainly use horseless carriages these days, so the word isn't much used nowadays.  According to Hackney's Wikipedia page They don't give an etymology for the original village of Hackney, though, but the Online Etymology Dictionary says it's from "Haca's Isle" (or possibly "Hook Island"), the "isle" element here meaning dry land in a marsh. Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life. | |||
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The OED has 5 different nouns hack, all with different origins. | |||
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Yes, I noticed that. That's why I had wondered about Z's comment above (about Yiddish). How do linguists decide which it is? Or is it a combination? | |||
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I don't understand that question. Surely that depends on the context of the word? Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life. | |||
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In times past this meaning of "hack" was "MacGyver." Was it so long ago? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacGyver | |||
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I've heard of the show since but although it apparently appeared on both the BBC and ITV networks I don't remember even seeing it advertised at the time, let alone seeing any episodes. 'To MacGyver' was certainly not used over here. Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life. | |||
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The term was common enough here that it's still in the Urban Dictionary: http://www.urbandictionary.com...ne.php?term=Macgyver | |||
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How do linguists decide which it is? Well, a lot of the early hacker jargon (which originated with the MIT Model Train Club) was of Yiddish origin. And the original meaning of hack was to get locked doors open and investigate tunnels under buildings and such. Lexicographers tend to look at a lot of sources before they make their decisions. It's a tough task to write a dictionary (as opposed to a word list with some glosses). —Ceci n'est pas un seing. | |||
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So physicist Richard Feynman was a hacker without knowing it? | |||
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I just wonder what goes into making their final decisions. Is it dates of use? If the word has subtly different meanings, is it different for different meanings? I absolutely get that lexicography is a complex science. | |||
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Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Some words have taken on different meanings over the years, often as a result of figurative use. Gay is probably a prime example, having changed meanings multiple times over the years. Sometimes the new meanings take over completely and sometimes they will operate in parallel, as it were. Decent dictionaries will of course include the older meanings (marking it as archaic if required). It is of course up to the lexicographers to decide if a particular use is sufficiently different from the others to warrant a separate entry. The situation can be confused - is the mouth of a person or animal a totally different word from the mouth of a river? In some cases the words arose from different etymologies - for example skate (glide on ice) comes from a different root to skate (a flatfish). The task is much easier in these cases of course. Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life. | |||
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The evolution of words (i.e., gay) is a bit different from etymology in my mind. In the case of gay, for example, the OED has its etymology being: It all seems so complicated. They then go on with a discussion about how the definition of homosexual developed. | |||
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