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''hackle'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

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''hackle'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260331180822-00-⌔

hackle - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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hackle (noun sense 1) for threshing flax

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hackles (noun sense 2) on a rooster

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hackle (noun sense 3) on a fishing lure

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red hackle (noun sense 7) on a balmoral

Noun

hackle (countable and uncountable, plural hackles)

  • An instrument with steel pins used to comb out flax or hemp. [from 15th c.]
    • ✤ Synonyms: heckle, hatchel
  • (usually now in the plural) One of the long, narrow feathers on the neck of birds, most noticeable on the rooster. [from 15th c.]
  • (fishing) A feather used to make a fishing lure or a fishing lure incorporating a feather. [from 17th c.]
  • (usually now in the plural) By extension (because the hackles of a rooster are lifted when it is angry), the hair on the nape of the neck in dogs and other animals; also used figuratively for humans. [from 19th c.]
    • ✤ When the dog got angry, his hackles rose and he growled.
    • ✤ Suppose it happened to be the case that the majority of individuals raised their hackles only when they were truly intending to go on for a very long time in the war of attrition. The obvious counterploy would evolve: individuals would give up immediately when an opponent raised his hackles.1
  • A type of jagged crack extending inwards from the broken surface of a fractured material.
  • A plate with rows of pointed needles used to blend or straighten hair. [from 20th c.]
  • A feather plume on some soldier’s uniforms, especially the hat or helmet.
    • ✤ Synonyms: panache, plume
  • Any flimsy substance unspun, such as raw silk.
  • (uncountable, slang) Pluck; courage or energy.
    • ✤ “COME ALONG YE GRASS-COMBERS, SHOW some hackle,” David Ingram, striding ahead, turned back and called.2

Verb

hackle (third-person singular simple present hackles, present participle hackling, simple past and past participle hackled)

  • To dress (flax or hemp) with a hackle; to prepare fibres of flax or hemp for spinning. [from 17th c.]
    • ✤ Then, with a smile that seemed to have all the freshness of the matutinal hour in it, she bent again to her work of hackling flax.3
  • (transitive) To separate, as the coarse part of flax or hemp from the fine, by drawing it through the teeth of a hackle or hatchel.
  • (archaic, transitive) To tear asunder; to break into pieces.
    • ✤ the other divisions of the kingdom being hackled and torn to pieces4

Etymology

From Middle English hakle (compare the compound meshakele), from Old English hæcla, hacele, from Proto-Germanic ﹡hakulǭ, equivalent to hack +‎ -le. Cognate with Dutch hekel, German Hechel.

Pronunciation

  • IPA: /ˈhækəl/, [ˈhækəl] ~ [ˈhækl̩]
    • Audio (Southern England): 🔊
    • Audio (US): 🔊
  • Rhymes: -ækəl
  • Hyphenation: hack‧le

Printed 2026-06-28.

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Footnotes

  1. 1976, Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, Kindle edition, OUP Oxford, published 2016, page 101: ↩

  2. 1949, Eric Philbrook Kelly, The Amazing Journey of David Ingram, page 11: ↩

  3. 1891, Mary Noailles Murfree, In the “Stranger People’s” Country, Nebraska, published 2005, page 155: ↩

  4. 1790 November, Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, and on the Proceedings in Certain Societies in London Relative to that Event. […], London: […] J[ames] Dodsley, […], →OCLC: ↩

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