An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language/Annotated/hacken

by Friedrich Kluge

hacken, verb, from the equivalent Middle High German hacken, ‘to hack, hew’; Old High German *hacchôn is by chance not recorded; compare Anglo-Saxon haccian (hœccean), English to hack, Old Frisian tohakia, ‘to hack to pieces.’ Not found in Gothic; may we assume *hawôn, a derivative from the stem haw in hauen? The medial guttural may have been simply an insertion before w, as in queck and keck. — Hacke, feminine (thus even in Middle High German), Häckerling (Modern High German only), and Hächsel are derivatives.