hacking

hacking — adjective

IPA/ˈhæk.ɪŋ/
KK[hˈækɪŋ]IPA/ˈhæk.ɪŋ/
  • hackingpositive
  • more hackingcomparative
  • most hackingsuperlative

1. describes a cough that is dry, harsh, repeated, and sounds painful — as if the p

1.adjectiveB2
Definition

describes a cough that is dry, harsh, repeated, and sounds painful — as if the person is being torn apart from the inside.

Example

A loud hacking cough from the next room kept Élise awake all night.

attributive use: hacking + cough only

After two weeks of cold, Femi's grandmother developed a painful hacking cough.

Common collocations
  • hacking cough
  • terrible hacking cough
  • loud hacking cough
  • painful hacking cough
Synonyms
  • dry

    less intense; dry cough lacks the harsh, tearing quality of a hacking cough

  • rasping

    focuses on the rough, scraping sound rather than the painfulness

Grammar Patterns

hacking + cough (only noun it modifies)

Usage Note

This sense of 'hacking' is only used before the noun 'cough.' It never appears in other positions — not 'The cough is hacking' — and never modifies other nouns.

Common Mistakes

He has a hacking all winter.
He had a hacking cough all winter.
'hacking' cannot stand alone as a noun for a cough; it must always be followed by 'cough.'

hacking — noun

IPA/ˈhækɪŋ/
KK[hˈækɪŋ]IPA/ˈhækɪŋ/

Word family

Synonym discussion

Sense: noun/1

While hacking broadly refers to any unauthorized access to computer systems, cracking specifically means breaking security measures with malicious intent — all crackers are hackers, but not all hackers are crackers. Intrusion focuses on the act of entering a system without permission and is commonly used in formal security reports ('intrusion detection system'). Cyberattack is a broader term covering any digital assault, including viruses, denial-of-service attacks, and data theft, of which hacking is just one method. Break-in is an informal, everyday word that can refer to computers or physical premises. For example: 'The attack started with a simple break-in using stolen passwords, but the full cyberattack involved weeks of careful hacking and data theft before anyone noticed the intrusion.'

cracking ↗intrusion ↗cyberattack ↗break-in ↗

Common collocations

Nouns

Phrases

  • go hacking
  • ethical hacking

Prepositions

Etymology

Old EnglishMiddle EnglishEnglish

The word 'hacking' is the gerund form of the verb 'hack.' The verb has two separate origins that later converged. One comes from Old English 'haccian' meaning 'to cut or chop roughly' — from this root come both the 'hacking cough' (a cough that sounds like rough cutting) and the computer sense (which began at MIT in the 1960s, where 'hack' meant a clever, creative technical solution; by the 1980s it had shifted toward unauthorized access). The horse-riding sense comes from a different origin: 'hackney,' a Middle English word for a horse available for hire, which was shortened to 'hack' by the 1600s and later gave rise to 'hacking' for recreational riding.