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English
Noun
hackney writer (plural hackney writers)
- (obsolete) A writer for hire.
- Synonym: penny-a-liner
1760, Tobias Smollet, The Life and Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves:[…] he learned, that Justice Gobble, whose father was a tailor, had for some time served as a journeyman hosier in London, where he had picked up some law terms, by conversing with hackney writers and attorneys’ clerks of the lowest order; […]
1910, G. M. Godden, Henry Fielding: A Memoir:[…] and at this his first entrance on the world he found, as he himself said, no choice but to be a hackney writer or a hackney coachman.
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