See hack about on Wiktionary
{
"forms": [
{
"form": "hacks about",
"tags": [
"present",
"singular",
"third-person"
]
},
{
"form": "hacking about",
"tags": [
"participle",
"present"
]
},
{
"form": "hacked about",
"tags": [
"participle",
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "hacked about",
"tags": [
"past"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "*"
},
"expansion": "hack about (third-person singular simple present hacks about, present participle hacking about, simple past and past participle hacked about)",
"name": "en-verb"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "British English",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
},
{
"_dis": "66 34",
"kind": "other",
"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
"parents": [],
"source": "w+disamb"
},
{
"_dis": "80 20",
"kind": "other",
"name": "English phrasal verbs formed with \"about\"",
"parents": [],
"source": "w+disamb"
},
{
"_dis": "89 11",
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with 1 entry",
"parents": [],
"source": "w+disamb"
},
{
"_dis": "90 10",
"kind": "other",
"name": "Pages with entries",
"parents": [],
"source": "w+disamb"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
167,
180
]
],
"ref": "1829, Ann Thicknesse, chapter 5, in The School of Fashion, volume 1, page 107:",
"text": "“So Madam has taken Miss amongst the Parlez-vous! By Jove, if she had been my wife, she should have trained the filly at home. She’ll run none the better for all this hacking about.”",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
138,
148
]
],
"ref": "1905, E. M. Forster, chapter 6, in Where Angels Fear to Tread, published 1920, page 106:",
"text": "What a frightfully spotty blouse! He could not think where he had seen it. Then he remembered that it was Lilia’s. She had brought it “to hack about in” at Sawston, and had taken it to Italy beacuse “in Italy anything does.”",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
94,
107
]
],
"ref": "1993, Kim Stanley Robinson, Green Mars:",
"text": "Here they had started so well, sixty years of solid achievement—and now different people were hacking about with different ideas and different toys, arguing and working against each other, bringing ever more powerful and expensive methods to bear, but with ever less coordination.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To be idle; to waste time; to socialize."
],
"id": "en-hack_about-en-verb-AopFBobt",
"links": [
[
"idle",
"idle"
],
[
"waste time",
"waste time"
],
[
"socialize",
"socialize"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(UK, colloquial, intransitive) To be idle; to waste time; to socialize."
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "hack around"
}
],
"tags": [
"UK",
"colloquial",
"intransitive"
]
},
{
"categories": [
{
"kind": "other",
"name": "British English",
"parents": [],
"source": "w"
}
],
"examples": [
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
170,
176
],
[
180,
185
]
],
"ref": "1866, Alphonse du Helder, “At Home and Abroad: Dramatic Notes”, in Once a Week, volume 1, number 20, page 543:",
"text": "All Paris now crowds to see “Barbe Bleue,” an opéra-bouffe […]. The dear old story of “Blue Beard” has been taken by Messieurs Meilhar and L. Halévy, who have ruthlessly hacked it about, until nothing of the original remains[…]",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
65,
72
],
[
78,
83
]
],
"ref": "1956, Agatha Christie, Dead Man’s Folly, page 35:",
"text": "It’s true that they have occasionally damaged the rare shrubs by hacking them about—they come through here trying to get a short cut to the Ferry across the river.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
68,
80
]
],
"ref": "2017, Hilary Mantel, “How Do We Know Her? The Secrets of Margaret Pole”, in Mantel Pieces, published 2020:",
"text": "Even more sedate accounts agree that, like Thomas Cromwell, she was hacked about by a second-string executioner.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To disfigure or damage by hacking; to cover with cuts."
],
"id": "en-hack_about-en-verb-Z3JwMdzr",
"links": [
[
"disfigure",
"disfigure"
],
[
"damage",
"damage"
],
[
"cover",
"cover"
],
[
"cuts",
"cut#Noun"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(UK, transitive) To disfigure or damage by hacking; to cover with cuts."
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "mangle"
}
],
"tags": [
"UK",
"transitive"
]
}
],
"word": "hack about"
}
{
"categories": [
"English entries with incorrect language header",
"English lemmas",
"English multiword terms",
"English phrasal verbs",
"English phrasal verbs formed with \"about\"",
"English verbs",
"Pages with 1 entry",
"Pages with entries"
],
"forms": [
{
"form": "hacks about",
"tags": [
"present",
"singular",
"third-person"
]
},
{
"form": "hacking about",
"tags": [
"participle",
"present"
]
},
{
"form": "hacked about",
"tags": [
"participle",
"past"
]
},
{
"form": "hacked about",
"tags": [
"past"
]
}
],
"head_templates": [
{
"args": {
"1": "*"
},
"expansion": "hack about (third-person singular simple present hacks about, present participle hacking about, simple past and past participle hacked about)",
"name": "en-verb"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
"senses": [
{
"categories": [
"British English",
"English colloquialisms",
"English intransitive verbs",
"English terms with quotations"
],
"examples": [
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
167,
180
]
],
"ref": "1829, Ann Thicknesse, chapter 5, in The School of Fashion, volume 1, page 107:",
"text": "“So Madam has taken Miss amongst the Parlez-vous! By Jove, if she had been my wife, she should have trained the filly at home. She’ll run none the better for all this hacking about.”",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
138,
148
]
],
"ref": "1905, E. M. Forster, chapter 6, in Where Angels Fear to Tread, published 1920, page 106:",
"text": "What a frightfully spotty blouse! He could not think where he had seen it. Then he remembered that it was Lilia’s. She had brought it “to hack about in” at Sawston, and had taken it to Italy beacuse “in Italy anything does.”",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
94,
107
]
],
"ref": "1993, Kim Stanley Robinson, Green Mars:",
"text": "Here they had started so well, sixty years of solid achievement—and now different people were hacking about with different ideas and different toys, arguing and working against each other, bringing ever more powerful and expensive methods to bear, but with ever less coordination.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To be idle; to waste time; to socialize."
],
"links": [
[
"idle",
"idle"
],
[
"waste time",
"waste time"
],
[
"socialize",
"socialize"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(UK, colloquial, intransitive) To be idle; to waste time; to socialize."
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "hack around"
}
],
"tags": [
"UK",
"colloquial",
"intransitive"
]
},
{
"categories": [
"British English",
"English terms with quotations",
"English transitive verbs"
],
"examples": [
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
170,
176
],
[
180,
185
]
],
"ref": "1866, Alphonse du Helder, “At Home and Abroad: Dramatic Notes”, in Once a Week, volume 1, number 20, page 543:",
"text": "All Paris now crowds to see “Barbe Bleue,” an opéra-bouffe […]. The dear old story of “Blue Beard” has been taken by Messieurs Meilhar and L. Halévy, who have ruthlessly hacked it about, until nothing of the original remains[…]",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
65,
72
],
[
78,
83
]
],
"ref": "1956, Agatha Christie, Dead Man’s Folly, page 35:",
"text": "It’s true that they have occasionally damaged the rare shrubs by hacking them about—they come through here trying to get a short cut to the Ferry across the river.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"bold_text_offsets": [
[
68,
80
]
],
"ref": "2017, Hilary Mantel, “How Do We Know Her? The Secrets of Margaret Pole”, in Mantel Pieces, published 2020:",
"text": "Even more sedate accounts agree that, like Thomas Cromwell, she was hacked about by a second-string executioner.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To disfigure or damage by hacking; to cover with cuts."
],
"links": [
[
"disfigure",
"disfigure"
],
[
"damage",
"damage"
],
[
"cover",
"cover"
],
[
"cuts",
"cut#Noun"
]
],
"raw_glosses": [
"(UK, transitive) To disfigure or damage by hacking; to cover with cuts."
],
"synonyms": [
{
"word": "mangle"
}
],
"tags": [
"UK",
"transitive"
]
}
],
"word": "hack about"
}
Download raw JSONL data for hack about meaning in All languages combined (3.8kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-05-27 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-05-01 using wiktextract (4997730 and 9380997). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.