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hackney - vt. to make trite, common, or stale by frequent use; hence, hackneying, hackneyism

So common hackney'd in the eyes of men - Shakespeare, Henry IV

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charette/charrette

My daughter (grad school) is participating in a charette, a three-day gathering during which something is designed in three days that might normally take a year. Sometimes this event takes place worldwide. I found a word closely resembling "charrette," meaning cart, in a French dictionary. Found nothing in an English dictionary. Can you help? Thanks.



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Try this one: charrette It seems to have some relevance. See what you think. :0)

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There's some things I'll trust Wikipedia for, but etymology isn't one of them. It's a good sounding story and may well be true, but so are a lot of folk etymologies. I'd like to see some more reliable source quoted. Wordorigins is a good place to go to ask this question.

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OED3(?) seems to have bought into something like that:

DRAFT ADDITIONS JUNE 2007

charet, n.

* Chiefly N. Amer. (orig. Archit.). A period of intense (group) work, typically undertaken in order to meet a deadline. Also: a collaborative workshop focusing on a particular problem or project; (Town Planning) a public meeting or conference devoted to discussion of a proposed community building project.
[Probably originally with reference to the former custom among French architecture students of using a cart to carry their work on the day of an exhibition: see Trésor de la Langue Française s.v. charrette.]

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OED I'll believe.

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I do agree, in an "expert's" sense, but here I was attempting to respond to a term that was probably not chosen by an etymologist, and therefore may have more in common with the folk etymologies than would OED, whether any of it is "correct" or not. :0)

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see Trésor de la Langue Française s.v. charrette

That's weird. If you follow the link from the site linked in the Wikipedia article, they give a different origin for charrette.
 Quote:
This use of the term is said to originate from the École des Beaux Arts in Paris during the 19th century, where proctors circulated a cart, or "charrette", to collect final drawings while students frantically put finishing touches on their work.
Both Wikipedia and the OED cite the Trésor de la Langue Française.
 Quote:
P. réf. à la coutume des élèves d'archit. qui, le jour de l'exposition, chargeaient leurs projets sur une charrette tirée par le plus jeune de l'atelier.
This is one idiomatic meaning, but it retains its primary, unchanged meaning of cart, too. The citation is from the 1960s, and no mention is made of the École des Beaux Arts. So, rather than losing its meaning (has any word done that?), it's gained another one (many have done that!).


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In NYC Charette is a small collection (2? 3?) of stores at various locations, that specialize in architect's supplies..

they also (or used to) have a contest for budding architects every year.

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 Originally Posted By: zmjezhd
So, rather than losing its meaning (has any word done that?)


what about nice? it no longer has its 'original' meaning and some might say it has very little meaning at all these days.

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