Word.ws English Dictionary

hackneys

hackneys is the plural of hackney.

hackneys is the third-person singular simple present indicative of hackney.

Meaning of hackney

Noun

hackney (countable and uncountable, plural hackneys)

  1. (archaic) An ordinary horse.
  2. A carriage for hire or a cab.
    • "Mamma would die if she knew. The boy," replied Georgiana, "walked with us to Oxford Street, and we took a hackney-coach. Will Mrs. Gooch ever forgive us for getting out of it at her door?"1838 (date written), L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XIV, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn, […], published 1842, →OCLC, page 186
  3. A horse used to ride or drive.
  4. A breed of English horse.
  5. (archaic) A hired drudge; a hireling; a prostitute.
  6. (archaic, uncountable) Inferior writing; literary hackwork.
    • Not that the existence of Grub street is to be doubted: it was, indeed, a grim actuality, and many a garreter realised by experience
      How unhappy's the fate
      To live by one's pate
      And to be forced to write hackney for bread.quoted in 1972, Pat Rogers, Grub Street: Studies in a Subculture (page 384)

See all 16 meanings of hackney

Questions about hackneys

What is hackneys the plural of?
Hackneys is the plural of hackney.

Words near hackneys in the dictionary

  1. hackneyer
  2. hackneyers
  3. hackneying
  4. hackneyman
  5. hackneymen
  6. hackneys
  7. hacknied
  8. hackproof
  9. hackproofed
  10. hackproofing
  11. hackproofs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hackneys (page history and authors); hackney (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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