EXAMPLES FROM THE WEB FOR HACKNEY
Not one, save the hackney carman, who evidently did not know him.
I hailed the first hackney carriage I met and drove to my rooms.
It was late in the night when we turned homewards in a hackney carriage.
Then Sir Percivale mounted upon that hackney, and rode as fast as he might.
Half the hackney coachmen, he says, were in league with thieves.
Then he asked me, "which was the first hackney coach stand?"
Before the west end of the church was the first stand for hackney coaches.
The hackney resumes all which it had lost in the good graces of the fair authoress.
This is the individual character and peculiar fascination of Hackney Marsh.
And this was not strange, for there is really nothing like Hackney Marsh in London.
WORD ORIGIN
late 12c., from Old English Hacan ieg "Haca's Isle" (or possibly "Hook Island"), the "isle" element here meaning dry land in a marsh. Now well within London, it once was pastoral and horses apparently were kept there. Hence hackney "small saddle horse let out for hire" (c.1300), with subsequent deterioration of sense (see hack (n.2)). And cf. French haquenée "ambling nag," an English loan-word.