a1398 J. Trevisa tr. Bartholomaeus Anglicus De Proprietatibus Rerum (BL Add. 27944) (1975) II. xvii. cxlviii. 1047 Vnnethe þornes beth..yrooted out of þe grounde withoute hook, bille, hakker, or som oþer egge tool [L. sine falce vel sarculo ferreo].

1481 in J. P. Collier Househ. Bks. John Duke of Norfolk & Thomas Earl of Surrey (1844) 137 Item, for hakkeres ij.d.

1688 R. Holme Acad. Armory iii. vi. 292/2 The Dutch Cleever, or Chopping Knife..is termed an Hacker, or Hack-mes.

a1722 E. Lisle Observ. Husbandry (1752) 214 My labourers came from mowing vetches..not having their hackers with them.

1855 Jrnl. Royal Agric. Soc. 15 i. 100 Hoeing with a heavy hacker or hoe between the rows.

1879 G. F. Jackson Shropshire Word-bk. Hacker, a short, strong, slightly curved implement of a peculiar kind, for chopping off the branches of fallen trees, &c.

1890 J. D. Robertson Gloss. Words County of Gloucester Hacker, a sort of axe for cutting faggots.

1901 Munsey's Mag. Jan. 485/2 Swords or knives can be divided into two classes, the hackers and the stickers.

1921 Forging & Heat Treating Dec. 599/1 Three equally spaced cuts with a sharp hacker made on a round forging..will make a square clean cut.

1984 D. Malouf Harland's Half Acre 77 They [sc. quarrels] could be guessed at only by the higher level of noise they produced when Della went to work with her hacker.

2010 A. Butt River Hobbler's Apprentice iv. 35 I had just stopped cutting to sharpen my hacker.

1875 E. H. Knight Amer. Mech. Dict. II. 1046/1 Hacker, a cutting-tool for making an oblique incision in the pine-tree for leading the gum turpentine towards the box in which it is collected.

1893 Rep. Secretary of Agric. 1892 343 in U.S. Congress. Serial Set (52nd Congress, 2nd Sess., House of Representatives Executive Doc. 1, Pt. 6) XX As soon as the scarified surface (‘chip’) ceases to discharge turpentine freely, fresh incisions are made with the hacker.

1917 M. Hill McAllister's Grove 111 The hacker is a knife with a curved blade whose murderous power is strengthened by a sort of cannon-ball attachment to the handle.

1930 W. A. Barton Outlining as Study Procedure v. 55 This was done with a sharp blade called a hacker.

1576 G. Gascoigne tr. Pope Innocent III 1st Bk. Vewe Worldly Vanities in Droomme of Doomes Day i. sig. D.v Rashe quarellers and hackers.

1581 G. Pettie tr. S. Guazzo Ciuile Conuersat. iii. f. 16^v Like these cutters, and hackers [It. espadacins], who will take the wall of men, and picke quarrels to them.

1621 R. Burton Anat. Melancholy i. ii. iii. xiii. 159 A common hacker, or a notorious theefe.

1652 W. Blith Eng. Improver Improved Ded. to Cromwell p. xii How comes City and Country to bee filled with Drones and Rogues, our highwaies with hackers?

1593 M. Sutcliffe Pract., Proc., & Lawes of Armes iv. 67 Our great cutters & hackers, in the streets of London, are seldome great hackers of the enemy.

1620 G. Markham Farwell to Husbandry ii. 10 One good hacker, being a lusty labourer, will at good ease hacke and cut more then halfe an Aker of ground in a day.

1757 T. Hale et al. Compl. Body Husbandry (new ed.) II. v. 103 These People, whom from the Instruments they us'd, they call'd Hackers, were to follow the first plowing, and to cut and hack the larger Lumps to Pieces.

1784 New Spectator No. 4. 5/1 Hackers and hewers of reputation.

?1795 Dict. Literary Conversat. 118 The principal officers of the empire of Mexico were distinguished by the odd titles of Princes of unerring javelins; Hackers of men; and Drinkers of blood.

1824 Med. Adviser 11 Dec. 402 (heading) Cutters, Hackers, Bleeders, and Bone-setters.

1887 North Amer. Rev. Oct. 365 He was hacked to pieces, as well as were some of his hackers, the victor being the one who came off with the head.

1960 Eng. Jrnl. 49 61 In our own field of English, we have long witnessed a veritable army of hackers at the branches compared to the isolated striker at the roots.

1999 Brisbane News 7 July 35/1 The happy hacker. Stop and think before you start chopping off those tree limbs.

a1603 T. Cartwright Confut. Rhemists New Test. (1618) 606 To make the Author of the Epistle such a hacker and mangler as they themselues be.

1605 J. Smyth Paterne True Prayer 101 These men may be called manglers and hackers of Gods word, for they cannot deuide the word aright, as the Apostle speaketh.

1934 Hartford (Connecticut) Courant 5 Sept. 12/4 All a fellow has to do to win the National Amateur championship is to win eight matches. Remember, also, that there are no hackers in this field.

1975 New Yorker 5 May 102/3 Rough made a course harder for just the wrong golfers—the hackers, for whom the course was already difficult enough.

1990 Tennis July 99/2 They punish laziness and insufficient aggression. That is hardly the route to a hacker's affections.

2007 R. Lipsey Golfing on Roof of World viii. 108 I was shaking when I reached the first tee... Never mind that most of the players in the field were everyday hackers.

1963 Tech (Massachusetts Inst. of Tech.) 1 Nov. 20 Many telephone services have been curtailed because of so-called hackers... The hackers have accomplished such things as tying up all the tie-lines between Harvard and MIT, or making long-distance calls... One method involved connecting the PDP-1 computer to the phone system to search the lines until a dial tone, indicating an outside line, was found.

1973 A. McKenzie Restricted Use of IMP DDT 30 May (RFC 521) in www.ietf.org (1999) (O.E.D. Archive) The NCC will monitor the setting of sense switch four and take appropriate action if unauthorized use is observed. We feel that this change will be sufficient to discourage ‘hackers’.

1986 TeleLink Sept. 25/2 Just for fun, the hackers decided to drop a few APBs (All Points Bulletins) into the local police computer, with the result that, when out driving in his car, he was repeatedly stopped.

1991 Sci. Amer. Feb. 15/1 Well-publicized incidents involving hackers, ‘worms’ and computer viruses have called the integrity of computer networks into question.

2011 Politico.com (Nexis) 6 July The Murdoch hacking saga..exploded into an international scandal this week with word that hackers employed by the News of the World illegally accessed the voicemail of a 13-year-old whose murder gripped the country.

2013 N.Y. Times (National ed.) 4 Mar. a9/6 Iranian hackers..brought down 30,000 computers belonging to Saudi Aramco.

1969 R. J. Thompson Instabilities some Time-dependent Flows (Ph.D. thesis, Mass. Inst. Technol.) Acknowl. 107 Charles Landau did some of the programming,..and W. B. Ackermann helped when the machine would not cooperate. Many other computer hackers also willingly offered advice.

1969 Tech Engin. News 51 99/2 Send a computer science major over to join a research team, a computer ‘hacker’ to use a small DEC computer, and experienced programmer to get a programming job.

1971 How to Get Around MIT (ed. 3) 169 Hack, a verb meaning to apply oneself very earnestly to something. Example: a computer hacker.

1972 S. Brand in Rolling Stone 7 Dec. 51/1 A true hacker is not a group person. He's a person who loves to stay up all night, he and the machine in a love-hate relationship.

1986 A & B Computing Nov. 16/3 The on-screen help is for the casual user but there's plenty for the hacker who wants to tinker with the software and tailor it for special purposes.

1994 Economist 19 Feb. 110/1 With a few taps on the keyboard, a thirsty hacker down the hall..can call to screen a video picture of the Cambridge coffee pot.

2012 Vanity Fair Oct. 239/1 Kalvin Wang and Randy Prang are hackers, the ones who write software.