A person who hackles flax, hemp, or other fibers by combing them; someone who interrupts speakers rudely or heckles.
From hackle (to comb out fibers with a spiky comb, from Old Norse 'hokull,' a flax comb) + -er (agent suffix). The word has two main uses: one in textile work and one in the sense of heckling, which came later.
Medieval 'hacklers' were textile workers who combed flax to separate fibers, and the word 'hackler' later shifted to mean someone who 'combs through' a speaker's words by interrupting—both meanings involve disrupting smooth order!
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