hack [OE] The word hack meaning ‘to cut with rough or heavy blows’ goes back to ancient times. Modern computer enthusiasts have used it in the sense ‘to gain unauthorised access to computer systems and data’ since the 1980s, although hacker appeared earlier, in the 1970s. The sense ‘to cope’ as in I can’t hack it dates from the 1950s. It has no relation to hack [E19th] ‘a writer or journalist producing dull, uninteresting work’. This word originally referred to a horse for everyday riding [L16th], especially one hired out and consequently often tired and overworked. It is a shortening of hackney [ME], probably taken from Hackney in East London, where horses were once pastured. This gave us the hackney carriage [M18th], originally a horse-drawn vehicle plying for hire and still the official British term for a taxi. The idea of tiredness and overwork continues in hackneyed [M17th], ‘overused, unoriginal, and trite’. See also jade, nag.