hacker

noun

hack·​er ˈha-kər 

1

: one that hacks

2

: a person who is inexperienced or unskilled at a particular activity

a tennis hacker

3

: an expert at programming and solving problems with a computer

4

: a person who illegally gains access to and sometimes tampers with information in a computer system

Synonyms of hacker

• cracker
• cyberpunk
• geek

Examples of hacker in a Sentence

My friends and I have been playing golf for years, but we're still just a bunch of hackers.

the company's security experts spent days trying to figure out how a hacker could have gotten past the firewall

Recent Examples on the Web

How hackers broke into Oracle Health's older systems The trouble began in early 2025. — Kurt Knutsson, FOXNews.com, 18 Oct. 2026

The breach caused the company, Instructure, to temporarily take Canvas offline and interrupted classes, assignments and finals preparations for hundreds of thousands of students and professors as hackers threatened to release their personal data. — Howard Blume, Los Angeles Times, 17 Oct. 2026

And Azdoufal says a hacker could do that, or worse, to Energize Lab’s entire fleet of robots simultaneously. — Sean Hollister, The Verge, 15 Oct. 2026

And any hacker is more likely to take the easier route, such as hacking someone’s computer to steal their encryption keys, than to try breaking the mathematics protecting them. — Chris Stokel-Walker, Scientific American, 15 Oct. 2026

Word History

First Known Use

14th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Rhymes for hacker

• acker
• backer
• blacker
• cracker
• lacquer
• packer
• slacker
• stacker
• thacker
• tracker
• attacker
• backpacker

Kids Definition

hacker

noun

hack·​er ˈhak-ər 

1

: one that hacks

2

: a person who is unskilled at a particular activity

3

: an expert at programming and solving problems with a computer

4

: a person who illegally gains access to a computer system