30-Second Word Whoop: “Hack”

Could be the workspace of a hacker … or a hack like me.

As a headline writer, I celebrate versatile words with multiple meanings. “Hack” can refer to writers, cabdrivers, geeks, or politicians. It describes being industrious enough to chop wood, idle enough to waste time (yours or someone else’s), and durable enough to “hack it.” Hackers inspire fear and awe; hacks, derision. A “hacktivist” is a hacker with principles, good or bad.

But the newest application of “hack” is to devise a workaround or beast a challenge. It has become a clickable headline word: 5 Hacks On Your Taxes. Not cheating per se, but simply getting them filed — hopefully, without getting hacked.

If you’re a hackney, you drive a cab; if hackneyed, you’re common or trite; if hacked, you may be breached or mangled.

You could have a hacking cough, but better a hacking jacket, which you’d wear riding a horse, not likely writing code.

According to Webster’s, “hack” comes from the Old English haccian or German hacken — which may have translated as “hook” or “hatchet.”

A hackamore is a type of rope; to “get someone’s hackles up,” like a dog’s, means to make them bristle, with anger or tension — unraveled, unhinged.

In basketball or rugby, hackers foul. But if you simply annoy someone, they’re hacked off.

Hackberries and hackmatacks are types of trees. A hacksaw could easily cut them down.

Related articles

• FBI arrests Sony LulzSec hacking suspect (guardian.co.uk)
• Sophos: Hacktivism, hacking and hackers – what do these words really mean? (boxofmeat.net)
• Homeless Hacker Arrested for Anonymous Crimes [Hackers] (gawker.com)