Summary: | cross av is used in two senses, and for two English words. The one is to cut in small notches, as to "hackle" the edge of the door. This is the same as the word to _hack_, defined "to cut irregularly, to notch with an imperfect instrument or in an unskilful manner." The other denotes the separating the coarse part of the flax from the fine by passing it through the teeth or an in- strument called in Northumberland and Yorkshire a _hackle_, in Scotch a _heckle_. Hence the word came to mean to handle roughly or to worry, particularly by annoying questions. In Newfoundland _hackle_ and _cross_ _hackle_ are especially applied to the questioning of a witness by a lawyer, when carried to a worrying degree. PRINTED ITEM DNE-cit G.M.Story July 1959 Used I Used I Used I cross-hackel, cross 'ackle, cross-heckle, cross-hackling, cross pile v Checked by Jordyn Hughes on Tue 28 Jun 2016
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