Literary notes about hack (AI summary)
Literary usage of the word "hack" spans a wide gamut of meanings. At times it evokes the image of rough, forceful cutting—as when a character’s sword is described as hack’d like a hand-saw [1, 2, 3, 4] or when violent chopping is invoked to achieve a desired end [5, 6, 7]. In other contexts, it characterizes the drudgery of uninspired, commercially driven work, whether referring to a hack writer engaged in derivative, mass-produced literature [8, 9] or to a writer’s need to earn a living through hack-work [10, 11, 12, 13, 14]. Additionally, the term appears in the guise of a means of conveyance—a hack cab or carriage used for travel [15, 16, 17, 18, 19]—demonstrating its versatility in both physical and metaphorical dimensions. Even in modern narratives, the notion of "hacking" stretches into digital realms, further underlining its rich, multipurpose use [20, 21].
- PRINCE. Tell me now in earnest, how came Falstaff’s sword so hack’d?
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare - I'll fight, 'til from my bones my flesh be hack'd.
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare - I'll fight till from my bones my flesh be hack'd.
— from Macbeth by William Shakespeare - What a slave art thou, to hack thy sword as thou hast done, and then say it was in fight!
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare - Sometimes I would give way to wild outbursts of rage, and hack and splinter some unlucky tree in my intolerable vexation.
— from The island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells - It would not be easy to hack a way through.
— from From Bapaume to Passchendaele, 1917 by Philip Gibbs - Let’s go back and hack the villain to pieces.
— from Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais - "A large catholicity is taking the place of the old fogyism of former days," scribbles the hack-writer.
— from The Heart-Cry of Jesus by Byron J. Rees - 109 Grubstreet a wretched street in London, inhabited in Pope's day by hack writers, most of whom were his enemies.
— from The Rape of the Lock, and Other Poems by Alexander Pope - Gradually he drifted into literature, and lived from hand to mouth by doing hack work for the London booksellers.
— from English Literature by William J. Long - Encouraged by his several small sales, Martin went back to hack-work.
— from Martin Eden by Jack London - But a reporter’s work is all hack from morning till night, is the one paramount thing of life.
— from Martin Eden by Jack London - All his important manuscripts had come back and been started out again, and his hack-work fared no better.
— from Martin Eden by Jack London - And next day Martin Eden cast hack-work aside, and at white heat hammered out an essay to which he gave the title, “The Philosophy of Illusion.”
— from Martin Eden by Jack London - I dismissed the hack, hurried to my room, and in a few minutes I was again flying along, in another hack, to 1252 Seward Street.
— from Cæsar's Column: A Story of the Twentieth Century by Ignatius Donnelly - Hence the degradation which the Colonel had almost suffered, of being obliged to enter the presence of his Sovereign in a hack cab.
— from Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray - After a brief reflection, he called a hack-cabriolet, and bade the man drive towards Bethnal Green.
— from Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens - He employed me to drive a hack, in which capacity I worked for him two years.
— from Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup - and then we came upon a church and a hack-driver, and presto!
— from The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain - People often ask me, “Why did you hack the Xbox security system?”
— from Little Brother by Cory Doctorow - However, the right to hack shouldn’t only be extended to academics.
— from Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
