hacker

UK/hækə/US/hækəɹ/

nounB1+Common in everyday speech and writing · #5,736 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: hackers

A hacker is a person who breaks into computer systems without permission. Catch the hacker, a hacker attack, hackers stole the data.

Programmers use the word the other way round, for somebody clever with machines, and resent the criminal sense — cracker was proposed as a replacement and never took. Most break-ins begin with a person being tricked rather than a system being outwitted.

Definitions of hacker

1nounhackerA person who breaks into computer systems without permission.B1+
“A hacker stole thousands of customers' passwords from the company's website.”

hacker is a person.

Where it comes from

Hack plus -er, from hack, to cut roughly. The computing sense first meant a clever tinkerer.

Proto-Indo-European
*keg-
Proto-Germanic
*hakkōną — to chop, hack
Proto-West Germanic
*hakkōn — to chop, hack
Old English
*haccian — to hack
Middle English
hackere
English, today
hacker

Built from

hakkere · Middle English — one who cuts wood, woodchopper, woodcutter; (rare) tool for cutting wood
hacke · Middle English — to cut (something) with a chopping action, hack; to make a chopping action
*keng- · Proto-Indo-European — to be sharp; a handle; a hook; a peg

From Late Middle English hackere, hakker, hakkere (“one who cuts wood, woodchopper, woodcutter; (rare) tool for cutting wood”), from hakken, hacke (“to cut (something) with a chopping action, hack; to make a chopping action”) + -er. Hakken is derived from Old English haccian (“to hack”), from Proto-West Germanic hakkōn (“to chop, hack”), from Proto-Germanic hakkōną (“to chop, hack”), from Proto-Indo-European keg-, keng- (“to be sharp; a handle; a hook; a peg”). The English word may be analysed as hack + -er.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Technology & Internet

Practise this word

hacker in the wild

A hacker is most commonly a person who seeks unauthorized access to a computer system or network.
Hacker
During the 1970s and 1980s, personal computers and modem-connected networks took hacker culture beyond academic laboratories.
Hacker
The hacker ethic is a philosophy and set of moral values within hacker culture.
Hacker ethic
Leet, also known as eleet, leetspeak, or simply hacker speech, is a system of modified spellings used primarily on the Internet.
Leet
Kevin David Mitnick was an American computer security consultant, author, and convicted hacker.
Kevin Mitnick

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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