What it means
To hack someone off means to really annoy them or wind them up till they're on the edge of snapping. It's very British and usually pops up when some daft little thing keeps happening over and over and starts sanding your patience down to dust. You can say something hacks me off or it's hacking me off when you're properly fed up and getting ratty.
Usage examples
"That neighbour’s drill is hacking me off, been whining since brekkie. If he starts again, I’m knocking round to tell him to pack it in."
"The bloke in the next flat practising his trumpet at half six in the morning is properly hacking me off, I have left two polite notes and one less polite voice memo by the door."
"It hacks me off when the supermarket moves the bread aisle without telling anybody, I walked round the shop three times and ended up buying a bag of carrots out of pure spite."
"This app keeps freezing every ten seconds, it's hacking me off proper."
"What hacks me off is when people stand in the doorway on the Tube like nobody else exists."
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Where it comes from
This one's British. Hack off grew out of hack in the older sense of chopping or cutting with rough repeated blows. By the mid 20th century, especially in British English, hacking someone off had settled into meaning getting on their nerves so persistently that it feels like their patience is being chopped away bit by bit.
Other ways to say it
Editors of this term
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