What’s the meaning of ‘stand hacking‘?

Question

I'm trying to understand this sentence:

For hours I stood hacking at the icy ground.

Which is in this excerpt of Viktor Frankl’s 1947 book, Man's Search for Meaning:

Another time we were at work in a trench. The dawn was grey around us; grey was the sky above; grey the snow in the pale light of dawn; grey the rags in which my fellow prisoners were clad, and grey their faces. I was again conversing silently with my wife, or perhaps I was struggling to find the reason for my sufferings, my slow dying. In a last violent protest against the hopelessness of imminent death, I sensed my spirit piercing through the enveloping gloom. I felt it transcend that hopeless, meaningless world, and from somewhere I heard a victorious “Yes” in answer to my question of the existence of an ultimate purpose. At that moment a light was lit in a distant farmhouse, which stood on the horizon as if painted there, in the midst of the miserable grey of a dawning morning in Bavaria. “Et lux in tenebris lucet”—and the light shineth in the darkness. For hours I stood hacking at the icy ground. The guard passed by, insulting me, and once again I communed with my beloved. More and more I felt that she was present, that she was with me; I had the feeling that I was able to touch her, able to stretch out my hand and grasp hers. The feeling was very strong: she was there. Then, at that very moment, a bird flew down silently and perched just in front of me, on the heap of soil which I had dug up from the ditch, and looked steadily at me.

Does that meaning standing still with a frozen body?

@HotLicks I sit here laughing at the notion of a comma gone missing there. — tchrist, Jul 10 '22 at 15:17
"Stood hacking" is not a single constituent, no more so than "came running" and "sat laughing" are single constituents. Instead, these three examples are all intransitive verbs in the past tense combined with a separate gerund–participial clause following them, as explained in the duplicate I've marked this as. — tchrist, Jul 10 '22 at 15:25

GEdgar · Accepted Answer · 2022-07-10T13:42:16.430

4

This is not "stand hacking" (hacking of a stand?).

No: I stood (I was on two legs, not walking). While I stood, I hacked (struck repeatedly, using some tool) at the ground. This is how I (and the other prisoners) were making a trench.

edited Jul 10 '22 at 13:42

answered Jul 10 '22 at 13:37

GEdgar

25,177

You might want to add: with a pickax. – Lambie Jul 10 '22 at 14:08
2

@Lambie or a pick-axe, or pickaxe. – Michael Harvey Jul 10 '22 at 14:34
@MichaelHarvey Merriam Webster: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pickax pickax. Depends on the side of the pond. – Lambie Jul 10 '22 at 14:50
@Lambie - well, Victor Frankl was Austrian, based in Vienna, so maybe he'd use eine Spitzhacke? – Michael Harvey Jul 10 '22 at 15:05
@MichaelHarvey It's hardly a strictly pondian distinction. Even in North America we commonly write pickaxe, just as we often write hand axe, throwing axe, battle-axe, pole-axe, and stone-axe. Although some North American writers lose the e in the singular, many others retain it in all instances and compounds (whether open like hand axe, hyphenated like hand-axe, or spaceless like handaxe). The U.S.A.’s National Axe* Throwing Federation* uses the canonical spelling. – tchrist Jul 10 '22 at 15:49
thank you very much, it makes sense to me now! – William8964 Jul 10 '22 at 16:33

What’s the meaning of ‘stand hacking‘?

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