ˈhackney-ˈcoach
[f. hackney n. 6 c + coach.]
A four-wheeled coach, drawn by two horses, and seated for six persons, kept for hire.
| c 1610 [implied in hackney-coachman]. 1635 J. Taylor (Water P.) Old Parr D iv, They [Coaches] have increased..to the undoing of the Watermen, by the multitudes of Hackney or hired Coaches: but they never swarmed so thick to pester the streets, as they doe now, till the yeare 1605. 1660 Pepys Diary 7 Nov., Notwithstanding this was the first day of the King's proclamation against hackney coaches coming into the streets to be hired, yet I got one to carry me home. 1777 Sheridan Trip Scarb. Prol., The streets, some time ago, were paved with stones Which, aided by a hackney-coach, half broke your bones. 1836 Dickens Sk. Boz (1849) 49/2 A regular, ponderous, rickety, London hackney-coach of the old school. 1882 W. Ballantine Exper. (1890) 16 A machine called a hackney-coach, licensed to carry six people..was the principal mode of locomotion. |
| attrib. 1623–4 Althorp MS. in Simpkinson Washingtons p. liii, 6 str. of oates to the hackney coach horses and the hackney horses. 1715 Lond. Gaz. No. 5344/3 The Hackney Coach Office in Surry street in the Strand. 1836 Dickens Sk. Boz (1850) 90/1 Rumours were rife on the hackney-coach-stands, that a buss was building, to run from Lisson-grove to the Bank. |