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cracker

noun
/ˈkɹækə(ɹ)/

Etymology

From Middle English craker (“a boaster”), equivalent to crack (“to break, snap, utter, make a sound”) + -er. From crack (verb), the sound made when one is broken. The hard "bread" and "biscuit" sense is first attested in 1739. The computing senses of cracker, crack, and cracking were promoted in the 1980s as an alternative to hacker, by programmers concerned about negative public associations of hack, hacking (“creative computer coding”). See Citations:cracker. Various theories exist regarding the term's application to poor white Southerners. One theory holds that it originated with disadvantaged corn and wheat farmers (corncrackers), who cracked their crops rather than taking them to the mill. Another theory asserts that it was applied due to Georgia and Florida settlers (Florida crackers) who cracked loud whips to drive herds of cattle, or, alternatively, from the whip cracking of plantation slave drivers. Yet another theory maintains that the term cracker was in use in Elizabethan times to describe braggarts (see crack (“to boast”)); a letter from 1766 supports this theory.

  1. inherited from craker — “a boaster”

Definitions

  1. A noisy boaster

    A noisy boaster; a swaggering fellow.

    • What cracker is this same that deafs our ears?

  2. A dry, thin, crispy baked bread (usually salty or savoury, but sometimes sweet, as in the…

    A dry, thin, crispy baked bread (usually salty or savoury, but sometimes sweet, as in the case of graham crackers and animal crackers).

  3. A prawn cracker.

    • There was feasting and joy from Shanghai to the Wall, What with dim-sims, chop-suey and crackers and all, And the donor of these, by the hook of my crook. Was Chiang Ki-Konglong, the Mandarin Cook.
  4. ›+ 8 more definitions

    1. The final section of certain whips, which is made of a short, thin piece of unravelled…

      The final section of certain whips, which is made of a short, thin piece of unravelled rope, or which is a short piece of twisted string tied to the end of the whip, which produces a distinctive cracking sound when the whip is cracked.

    2. A firecracker.

    3. A Christmas cracker.

      • It is customary in every part of China to fire off crackers on the last day and night of the year for the purpose of terrifying expelling the devils.

    4. A northern pintail, a dabbling duck of species Anas acuta.

    5. A person or thing that breaks a thing (e.g., nutcracker).

      • a lobster and crab shell cracker

    6. A fine, great thing or person (crackerjack).

      • She's an absolute cracker!
      • The show was a cracker!
      • A cracker of a day.

    7. An ambitious or hard-working person (i.e. someone who arises at the 'crack' of dawn).

    8. An impoverished white person from the southeastern United States, originally associated…

      An impoverished white person from the southeastern United States, originally associated with Georgia and parts of Florida; (by extension) any white person (slang).

      • Brothers and the whiteys / Blacks and the crackers / Police and their backers / They're all political actors
      • Check this shit: You got cracker farm boy Luke Skywalker, Nazi poster boy, blond hair, blue eyes. And then you got Darth Vader, the blackest brother in the galaxy, Nubian god!
      • “You know that old cracker beat them boys.”

The neighborhood

Derived

animal cracker, bitch eating crackers, cannon cracker, cat cracker, Christmas cracker, Christ on a cracker, coal cracker, corn cracker, Corn-cracker State, Corn cracker State, cracka, cracker-ass, crackerass, cracker barrel, cracker-barrel, crackerberry, cracker bonbon, crackerbox, cracker bread, crackerbread, cracker-jack, cracker jack, crackerjack, cracker jacks, crackerless, crackerlike, cracker meal, Cracker Night, cracklet, cream cracker, flat cracker, Florida cracker, Georgia cracker, Graham cracker, holy crap on a cracker, hydrocracker, jatz crackers, oyster cracker, Polly want a cracker, prawn cracker · +12 more

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for cracker. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA